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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
| By: | Butter, Frank A.G. den (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen en Econometrie (Free University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics Sciences, Business Administration and Economitrics); Mosch, Robert H.J. |
| Abstract: | The economic perspective on values and norms shows that they may bring about externalities for the society as a whole. This possibility of market failure provides a good reason for the government to follow closely the developments in values and norms, and the resulting behaviour in communities and networks. It justifies the initiative of Prime Minister Balkenende to organise the debate on these matters in the Netherlands (and, under the Dutch EU-presidency, in Europe). Networks can be associated both with positive (Putnam type) and with negative (Olson type) externalities. This paper discusses the various influences of values, norms and networks on socio-economic welfare and provides empirical evidence on these relationships. The focus of our own empirical analysis is on the Netherlands. Trust as part of social capital, and the role that values, norms and networks play as co-ordination mechanism, form important aspects both in the theoretical and in the empirical analysis. It appears that there has been no obvious decrease in these aspects of social capital in the Netherlands. It contrasts the findings of Putnam for the US. |
| Keywords: | social capital; values and norms; trust; networks; market failure |
| JEL: | D62 D70 H19 |
| Date: | 2004 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:vuarem:2004-10&r=soc |
| By: | Massimiliano Mazzanti (University of Ferrara); Giulio Cainelli (University of Bari and CERIS-CNR); Susanna Mancinelli (University of Ferrara) |
| Abstract: | The main idea behind this paper is that social capital is not, as generally suggested by the socio-economic literature, an individual attitude towards something which does not imply privately appropriable economic benefits. Actually, SC might and should be interpreted as a public component of an investment which implies private and public benefits entangled with each other. In order to put forward this idea, a dynamic theoretical model that assumes social capital as the public component of the impure public good R&D is developed. It shows that the ‘civic culture’ of the district area in which the firm works is not sufficient as an incentive to increase its investment in social capital, because this investment strictly depends on the economic convenience of investing in the impure public good. Social capital /networking dynamics might positively and complementarily evolve only if the opportunity cost of investing in innovation is sufficiently low. We consequently focus our attention on a specialized industrial district located in the Emilia Romagna region – the biomedical district of Mirandola (Modena) – characterised by a strong pattern of innovative activity. Using a proxy for innovative activity as dependant variable, we observe that R&D and networking/social capital arise as complementary driving forces for innovation outputs. When empirical evidence confirms that this complementarity plays a key role, and consequently strong links exist between market and non-market dynamics relating to firms, the role for policy actions targeted to social capital is larger. The policy effort should be targeted toward both market and non-market characteristics taken together, rather than solely to the production of (local) public goods (social capital) or innovation inputs as independent elements of firm processes. The input of SC alone is not sufficient to ensure innovation and growth: economic incentives matter. On the other hand, whenever SC dynamics are crucial for R&D private investments, the effect of economic incentives depends on the presence and degree of their complementarity. |
| Keywords: | Social capital, R&D, Technological innovation, Industrial districts |
| JEL: | O32 D92 H49 |
| Date: | 2005–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2005.84&r=soc |
| By: | Joëlle Noailly (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Cees A. Withagen (Free University and Tilburg University); Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh (Free University) |
| Abstract: | We study the conditions for the emergence of cooperation in a spatial common-pool resource game. We consider three types of agents: cooperators, defectors and enforcers. The role of enforcers is to punish defectors for overharvesting the resource. Agents are located around a circle and they only observe the actions of their two nearest neighbors. Their payoffs are determined by both local and global interactions and they modify their actions by imitating the strategy in their neighborhood with the highest payoffs on average. Using theoretical and numerical analysis, we find that a large diversity of equilibria exists in this game. In particular, we derive conditions for the occurrence of equilibria in which the three strategies coexist. We also discuss the stability of these equilibria. Finally, we show that introducing resource dynamics favors the occurrence of cooperative equilibria. |
| Keywords: | Common property, Evolutionary game theory, Local interactions game, Self-organization, Cooperation |
| JEL: | C72 Q2 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2005.79&r=soc |
| By: | Joëlle Noailly (CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis); Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh (Free University); Cees A. Withagen (Free University and Tilburg University) |
| Abstract: | Conditions for the emergence of cooperation in a spatial common-pool resource game are studied. This combines in a unique way local and global interactions. A fixed number of harvesters are located on a spatial grid. Harvesters choose among three strategies: defection, cooperation, and enforcement. Individual payoffs are affected by both global factors, namely, aggregate harvest and resource stock level, and local factors, such as the imposition of sanctions on neighbors by enforcers. The evolution of strategies in the population is driven by social learning through imitation. Numerous types of equilibria exist in these settings. An important new finding is that clusters of cooperators and enforcers can survive among large groups of defectors. We discuss how the results contrast with the non-spatial, but otherwise similar, game of Sethi and Somanathan (1996). |
| Keywords: | Common property, Cooperation, Evolutionary game theory, Global interactions, Local interactions, Social norms |
| JEL: | C72 Q2 |
| Date: | 2005–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2005.78&r=soc |
| By: | Avner Ben-Ner; Brian McCall; Massoud Stephane; Hua Wang |
| Abstract: | The asumption that behavior is independent of the identity of those who participate in an economic interaction is fundamental to economists’ understanding of how markets operate, how firms work internally, how nations trade with each other, and much else. In this paper, we show that the distinction between Self and Other, ‘us’ and ‘them,’ or in-group and out-group, affects significantly economic and social behavior. In a series of experiments with approximately 200 Midwestern students as our subjects, we found that they favor those who are similar to them on any of a wide range of categories of identity over those who are not like them. Whereas family and kinship are the most powerful source of identity in our sample, all 13 potential sources of identity in our experiments affect behavior. We explored individuals’ willingness to give money to imaginary people, using a dictator game setup with hypothetical money. Our experiments with hypothetical money generate essentially identical data to our experiments with actual money. We also investigated individuals’ willingness to share an office with, commute with, and work on a critical project critical to their advancement with individuals who are similar to themselves (Self) along a particular identity dimension than with individuals who are dissimilar (Other). In addition to family, our data point to other important sources of identity such as political views, religion, sports-team loyalty, and music preferences, followed by television-viewing habits, dress type preferences, birth order, body type, socio-economic status and gender, albeit statistically significant, sources of differentiation between Self and Other. The importance of the source of identity varies with the type of behavior under consideration. |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hrr:papers:0805&r=soc |
| By: | Verena Fritz |
| Keywords: | governance; transition processes; post-Communism |
| Date: | 2004–12–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erp:euirsc:p0148&r=soc |