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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2017‒07‒02
ten papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Auriol, Emmanuelle; Camilotti, Giula; Platteau, Jean-Philippe |
| Abstract: | Social engineering refers to deliberate attempts, often under the form of legislative moves, to promote changes in customs and norms that hurt the interests of marginalized population groups. This paper explores the analytical conditions under which social engineering is more or less likely to succeed than more indirect approaches when it comes to suppress gender-biased customs. This implies discussing the main possible interaction frameworks leading to anti-women equilibria, and deriving policy implications from the corresponding games. The theoretical arguments are illustrated by examples drawn from available empirical works, thus providing a reasoned survey of the literature. |
| Keywords: | coordination incentives; deterrence; expressive function of law; Gender; harmful customs; Social norms |
| JEL: | D10 K10 K36 O15 Z10 Z13 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12107&r=soc |
| By: | Eliason, Marcus (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Hensvik, Lena (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Kramarz, Francis (CREST, Ecole Polytechnique, CEPR); Nordström Skans, Oskar (Department of Economics, Uppsala University) |
| Abstract: | The paper studies how social connections affect firm-level hiring decisions and performance. We characterize the social connections of firms’ employees using register data and for causal identification we use job displacements, which create directed positive shocks towards connected firms by increasing these firms’ available supply of connected labor. We ascertain that our results are fully driven by these directed supply shocks. Our results show that firms appear to prefer to hire employed workers to whom they are connected over unconnected or unemployed workers. Employed and connected workers mostly go to high-productivity firms, whereas unemployed and unconnected workers tend to go to low-productivity firms. Strong connections – family, recent, durable, formed in small groups, between socially similar agents – matter the most. A displacement shock causes connected firms, in particular low-productive ones, to hire more of the connected workers, while leaving unconnected hires and separations essentially unaffected. Increases in the supply of connected labor, therefore, cause the creation of additional jobs at the firm level. By using these shocks, we can also show that hiring connected workers has a positive causal impact on firm performance. Our results are consistent with a stylized framework where connections reduce hiring frictions and where the firms’ ability to hire connected workers is a function of these workers’ outside options. |
| Keywords: | networks; job search; job displacement; job creation |
| JEL: | J23 J30 J60 |
| Date: | 2017–06–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2017_011&r=soc |
| By: | Nitz, Lawrence H. (Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University); Dawson, Jack (Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University); Phillips, James L. (Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University) |
| Date: | 2017–04–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bie:wpaper:29&r=soc |
| By: | Marfouk, Abdeslam |
| Abstract: | During his presidential campaign, the new elected President of U.S., Donald Trump, called for a complete ban on Muslims from entering the United States. Although numerous European observers have been shocked by his racist proposal, using the most recent round of the European Social Survey, this paper found that a sizeable proportion of Europeans support a similar ban in their own countries, e.g. Czech Republic (54%), Hungary (51%), Estonia (42%), Poland (33%), and Portugal (33%). The paper also provides evidence that racism and immigration phobia play a key role in shaping Europeans’ support of a ban on Muslim immigration. This finding challenges the discourse and campaigns of the populist groups who exploit the ‘Islamization of Europe’ rhetoric successfully and use various pretexts to justify a call for a ban on Muslims’ immigration, e.g. the threat to security, secularism, democracy, Western ‘identity’, culture and values. |
| Keywords: | Anti-immigrants sentiment, Anti-Muslim sentiment, Islamophobia, Racism, Xenophobia, |
| JEL: | F22 J61 J71 |
| Date: | 2016–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:79747&r=soc |
| By: | Ralsmark, Hilda (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | Despite major developments in gender equality, differences between men and women’s economic and social behaviors remain. Several studies demonstrate the importance of gender norms in explaining a significant part of the gender gap. But what shapes gender norms? I provide evidence on the role of education, considered to be a key factor to reach gender equality, in influencing attitudes on gender norms in two different domains: the labor market and household. Exploiting educational reforms in Europe, I find that mandatory education and years of education significantly reduces individuals’ level of agreement on the gender norm that the man should be the breadwinner but not on the gender norm that the woman should be the homemaker. The result is consistent with the hypothesis that part of the ”stalled revolution” in gender equality is because norms in the household are more rigid than in the labor market, and that educated women face a dilemma between a career and family, or a double burden where they continue to do the lion’s share of household work. |
| Keywords: | Gender equality; Education; Gender Norms; Labor market; Household Economics |
| JEL: | D10 I20 J16 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0702&r=soc |
| By: | Sonja Brangewitz (Paderborn University); Behnud Mir Djawadi (Paderborn University); Angelika Endres (Paderborn University); Britta Hoyer (Paderborn University) |
| Abstract: | We experimentally study the emergence of networks under a known external threat. To be more specific, we deal with the question if subjects in the role of a strategic Designer are able to form safe and efficient networks while facing a strategic Adversary who is going to attack their networks. This investigation relates theoretical predictions by Dziubinski and Goyal (2013) to actual observed behaviour. Varying the costs for protecting nodes, we designed and tested two treatments with different predictions for the equilibrium network. Furthermore, the influence of the subjects' farsightedness on their decision-making process was elicited and analysed. We find that while subjects are able to build safe networks in both treatments, equilibrium networks are only built in one of the two treatments. In the other treatment, predominantly safe networks are built but they are not efficient. Additionally, we find that farsightedness -as measured in our experiment- has no influence on whether subjects are able to build safe or efficient networks. |
| Keywords: | Networks Experiment, Network Design, Network Defence, Network Disruption |
| JEL: | D03 D85 C91 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2017.30&r=soc |
| By: | Comino, Stefano; Galasso, Alberto; Graziano, Clara |
| Abstract: | What factors affect the diffusion of new economic institutions? This paper examines this question exploiting the introduction of the first regularized patent system which appeared in the Venetian Republic in 1474. We begin by developing a model which links patenting activity of craft guilds with provisions in their statutes. The model predicts that guild statutes that are more effective at preventing outsider's entry and at mitigating price competition lead to less patenting. We test this prediction on a new dataset which combines detailed information on craft guilds and patents in the Venetian Republic during the Renaissance. We find a negative association between patenting activity and guild statutory norms which strongly restrict entry and price competition. We show that guilds which originated from medieval religious confraternities were more likely to regulate entry and competition, and that the effect on patenting is robust to instrumenting guild statutes with their quasi-exogenous religious origin. We also find that patenting was more widespread among guilds geographically distant from Venice, and among guilds in cities with lower political connection which we measure exploiting a new database on noble families and their marriages with members of the great council. Our analysis suggests that local economic and political conditions may have a substantial impact on the diffusion of new economic institutions. |
| Keywords: | Competition; Guilds; institutions; patents |
| JEL: | K23 O33 O34 |
| Date: | 2017–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12102&r=soc |
| By: | Ines Lindner (VU Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute, The Netherlands); Holger Strulik (University of Goettingen, Germany) |
| Abstract: | We present a multi-country theory of economic growth and R&D-driven technological progress in which countries are connected by a network of knowledge exchange. Technological progress in any country depends on the state of technology in the countries it exchanges knowledge with. The diffusion of knowledge throughout the world explains a period of increasing world inequality after the take-off of the forerunners of the industrial revolution, followed by decreasing relative inequality. Knowledge diffusion through a Small World network produces an extraordinary diversity of country growth performances, including the overtaking of individual countries and the replacement of the technologically leading country in the course of world development. |
| Keywords: | networks, knowledge diffusion, economic growth, world income distribution |
| JEL: | O10 O40 D85 F43 |
| Date: | 2017–06–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20170057&r=soc |
| By: | Yang, Guanzhong |
| Abstract: | Economists believe in (monetary) incentives. However, in the specialized area of prosocial behaviours, (monetary) incentives could backfire because extrinsic motivation might crowd out intrinsic motivation. Moreover, national differences in the perception of incentives should also be considered, taking the cultural background of individuals into account. In this project, we ran a real effort experiment in Germany and in China. In addition to an extrinsic monetary incentive (personal payment) to the subjects, we made a donation to UNICEF, and the amount of the donation depended on the effort of the subjects, which served as an intrinsic motivation. The results indicate that with respect to activities with a prosocial element, Germans tended to exert a high level of effort, regardless of the alternation of the art and the level of their payoff; in contrast, the Chinese did react to extrinsic monetary incentives and exerted more effort with a linear payment or if the level of payment was high. Females exerted significantly more effort than males, and this was true for both the German and Chinese subjects. The last finding is that the Chinese were more motivated by a fixed non-monetary payment than a fixed monetary payment, if the level of payment was relatively low. |
| Keywords: | monetary incentives,prosocial behaviour,intrinsic and extrinsic motivation |
| JEL: | C91 D64 L31 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:udedao:1132017&r=soc |
| By: | Gao, Lin |
| Abstract: | Given the importance of trust, exploring what may affect trust then becomes attractive. The main purpose of this paper is to explain general trust quantitatively. This paper from, but not limited to, a perspective of original institutional economics elaborates what may affect general trust and proposes three reasonable hypotheses first, and then uses CGSS 2013 dataset to execute ordered logit regression of general trust on some selected variables. It is found that taken advantage has a strongly significant negative impact on general trust; fairness, moral satisfaction, opinion similarity, leisure time for rest and leisure time for learning have strongly significant positive impacts on general trust; public security problem, however, has a negative but not significant impact on general trust. These core explanatory variables improve predictive capability by 4 percent. This paper also compares general trust and trust in strangers, and regress trust in strangers on the same independent variables of general trust. There are two main differences: the first is that the negative impact of public security problem gets significant for trust in strangers; the second is that the significant impact of leisure time for resting gets negative for trust in strangers. |
| Keywords: | general trust, trust in strangers, original institutional economics, fairness, morality, opinion, public security, leisure time |
| JEL: | B52 C1 |
| Date: | 2017–06–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:79948&r=soc |