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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2024‒03‒18
seven papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | James Alm (Tulane University); Raul A. Barreto (University of Adelaide) |
| Abstract: | Governments are always dealing with unexpected shocks, like wars, terrorism, financial crises, natural disasters, and the like. A recent prominent example is the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Since early 2020, governments around the world have enacted a range of unprecedented measures in an attempt to protect their citizens, with quite mixed results. This varied record has in turn had dramatic effects on peoples perceptions of their government, especially on their trust in government and so on their willingness to obey the many government mandates generated by the pandemic. This willingness to obey government mandates extends well beyond pandemic policies to all other dimensions of government laws and regulations. An important dimension of individual compliance with government mandates is tax evasion. What will be the effects of the pandemic and the associated government policies on post-pandemic tax evasion and economic growth, especially via the effects of government policies on "trust" in the government? In this paper we incorporate both tax evasion and trust in an endogenous growth model in order to examine the short and long run impacts on tax evasion of various shocks -- a pandemic shock, a government policies shock, and a tax morale shock (and the resulting impact on trust in government). We then use real data on 11 representative economies to simulate these effects, economies representing developed and developing countries as well as economies representing governments that opted for various policy responses to COVID-19, modelled as a labor productivity shock. We find that varied public policy responses to the pandemic have immediate and persistent impacts on tax evasion in the short and long run, largely via their effects on trust in government. We also find that these evasion impacts vary in important and predictable ways that depend especially on whether government dealt effectively or not with the pandemic. Our methodology is readily adapted to examine the effects of other shocks and their respective policy responses on trust in government, tax evasion, and economic growth. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19, tax evasion and tax compliance, trust, endogenous growth models |
| JEL: | H26 H30 O40 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tul:wpaper:2405&r=soc |
| By: | Guiso, L.; Herrera, H.; Morelli, M.; Sonno, Tommaso |
| Abstract: | We document the spiral of populism in Europe and the direct and indirect role of economic insecurity shocks. Using survey data on individual voting, we make two contributions to the literature. (i) Economic insecurity shocks have a significant impact on the populist vote share, directly as demand for protection, and indirectly through the induced changes in trust and attitudes. (ii) A key consequence of increased economic insecurity is a drop in turnout. The impact of this largely neglected turnout effect is substantial: conditional on voting, when economic insecurity increases, almost 40% of the induced change in the vote for a populist party comes from the turnout channel. |
| Keywords: | 694583 |
| JEL: | J1 |
| Date: | 2024–02–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:122069&r=soc |
| By: | Aristide Houndetoungan; Asad Islam; Michael Vlassopoulos; Yves Zenou |
| Abstract: | Social networks play an important role in various aspects of life. While extensive research has explored factors such as gender, race, and education in network formation, one dimension that has received less attention is the gender of one's child. Children tend to form friendships with same-gender peers, potentially leading their parents to interact based on their child's gender. Focusing on households with children aged 3-5, we leverage a rich dataset from rural Bangladesh to investigate the role of children's gender in parental network formation. We estimate an equilibrium model of network formation that considers a child's gender alongside other socioeconomic factors. Counterfactual analyses reveal that children's gender significantly shapes parents' network structure. Specifically, if all children share the same gender, households would have approximately 15% more links, with a stronger effect for families having girls. Importantly, the impact of children's gender on network structure is on par with or even surpasses that of factors such as income distribution, parental occupation, education, and age. These findings carry implications for debates surrounding coed versus single-sex schools, as well as policies that foster inter-gender social interactions among children. |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2402.04474&r=soc |
| By: | Giulia Montresor (University of Verona); Lucia Schiavon (Department of Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; CHILD - Collegio Carlo Alberto, Torino) |
| Abstract: | Exploiting high-frequency vaccination data for COVID-19 and social capital measures at the municipal level in Italy between January and October 2021, this paper estimates the effect of social capital on vaccination compliance. We find that vaccination coverage increased significantly more in municipalities with higher social capital. Results do not differ by gender and the effect is mainly driven by younger generations. Our findings shed light on the role of social capital as a driver of health protective behaviour. |
| Keywords: | Social Capital, Vaccination, Health behaviour, COVID-19 |
| JEL: | I10 I18 D80 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2024:04&r=soc |
| By: | Selman Erol; Camilo Garcia-Jimeno |
| Abstract: | Governments use coercion to aggregate distributed information relevant to governmental objectives—from the prosecution of regime-stability threats to terrorism or epidemics. A cohesive social structure facilitates this task, as reliable information will often come from friends and acquaintances. A cohesive citizenry can more easily exercise collective action to resist such intrusions, however. We present an equilibrium theory where this tension mediates the joint determination of social structure and civil liberties. We show that segregation and unequal treatment sustain each other as coordination failures: citizens choose to segregate along the lines of an arbitrary trait only when the government exercises unequal treatment as a function of the trait, and the government engages in unequal treatment only when citizens choose to segregate based on the trait. We characterize when unequal treatment against a minority or a majority can be sustained, and how equilibrium social cohesiveness and civil liberties respond to the arrival of widespread surveillance technologies, shocks to collective perceptions about the likelihood of threats or the importance of privacy, or to community norms such as codes of silence. |
| Keywords: | civil liberties; Segregation; Information Aggregation |
| JEL: | D23 D73 D85 |
| Date: | 2024–02–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:97780&r=soc |
| By: | Diego Aycinena; Francisco B. Galarza Arellano; Javier Torres |
| Abstract: | Sudden massive migration influxes have been a new driving force of migration increases in recent decades. These types of migration flows present potential challenges to social and economic integration. In this paper we study socioeconomic integration using controlled laboratory experiments in a context of massive inflow of Venezuelan migrants in Peru, where the share of Venezuelan immigrants in the country’s population increased from almost zero in 2016 to 2.5 percent in 2019. Using adult (non-student) native-born Peruvians and Venezuelan immigrants as subjects, we conducted homogeneous (same nationality) and mixed (different nationality) experimental sessions in Lima, to examine interactions that require cooperation, coordination, trust, and reciprocity to achieve a Pareto efficient outcome. We find no evidence of in-group versus out-group (based on nationality) difference in those measures of pro-social behavior. Within this context, we also find no differentials in normative or empirical expectations in behavior of non-nationals relative to those of nationals, and only small to moderate implicit bias. This lack of differential treatment is suggestive of short-run economic integration between immigrants and natives, in a challenging context of massive influxes of migrants. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, Cooperation, Coordination, Trust, Economic Interactions, Lab Experiments |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:apc:wpaper:199&r=soc |
| By: | Effrosyni Adamopoulou; Jeremy Greenwood; Nezih Guner; Karen A. Kopecky |
| Abstract: | The role of friends in the US opioid epidemic is examined. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), adults aged 25-34 and their high school best friends are focused on. An instrumental variable technique is employed to estimate peer effects in opioid misuse. Severe injuries in the previous year are used as an instrument for opioid misuse in order to estimate the causal impact of someone misusing opioids on the probability that their best friends also misuse. The estimated peer effects are significant: Having a best friend with a reported serious injury in the previous year increases the probability of own opioid misuse by around 7 percentage points in a population where 17 percent ever misuses opioids. The effect is driven by individuals without a college degree and those who live in the same county as their best friends. |
| Keywords: | opioid; peer-group effects; friends; instrumental variables; Add Health; severe injuries |
| JEL: | C26 D10 I12 J11 |
| Date: | 2024–02–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:97764&r=soc |