|
on Social Norms and Social Capital |
|
Issue of 2006‒09‒16
fourteen papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Universita degli Studi di Roma, La Sapienza |
| By: | James Habyarimana (Georgetown University and IZA Bonn); Macartan Humphreys (Columbia University); Daniel N. Posner (University of California, Los Angeles); Jeremy Weinstein (Stanford University) |
| Abstract: | A large and growing literature links high levels of ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision. Yet while the empirical connection between ethnic heterogeneity and the underprovision of public goods is widely accepted, there is little consensus on the specific mechanisms through which this relationship operates. To gain analytic leverage on the question of why ethnicity matters, we identify three families of mechanisms – what we term preference, technology, and strategy mechanisms. Our empirical strategy is to identify and run a series of experimental games that permit us to examine these mechanisms in isolation and then to compare the importance of ethnicity in each. Results from experimental games conducted with a random sample of 300 subjects in Kampala’s slums reveal that successful collective action among homogenous ethnic communities in urban Uganda is attributable to the existence of norms and institutions that facilitate the sanctioning of non-contributors. We find no evidence for a commonality of tastes within ethnic groups, for greater degrees of altruism toward co-ethnics, or for an impact of shared ethnicity on the productivity of teams. |
| Keywords: | ethnic diversity, collective action, public goods, field experiments |
| JEL: | D71 H41 J15 O10 Z13 |
| Date: | 2006–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2272&r=soc |
| By: | Andrew E. Clark; Paul Frijters; Michael A. Shields |
| Abstract: | There is now a great deal of micro-econometric evidence, both cross-section and panel, showing that income is positively correlated with well-being. Yet the famous Easterlin paradox shows essentially no change in average happiness at the country level, despite spectacular rises in per capita GDP. We argue that survey well-being questions are indeed good proxy measures of utility, and resolve the Easterlin paradox by appealing to income comparisons: these can be to others (social comparisons) or to oneself in the past (habituation). We review a substantial amount of econometric, experimental and neurological literature consistent with comparisons, and then spell out the implications for a wide range of economic issues. |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pse:psecon:2006-24&r=soc |
| By: | Ermanno Tortia |
| Abstract: | Exploiting a unique data set concerning a sample of 228 social service organizations, and on 2066 workers, the paper seeks to demonstrate that workers’ satisfaction with the job and loyalty to the organization are crucially influenced by fairness concerns. Worker well-being is increased by a higher degree of perceived fairness, and the effect is highest for procedural fairness. By sorting the organizations into public and nonprofits, the former are found to be at a disadvantage in regard to both satisfaction and perceived fairness. Nonprofits show the highest scores on most items and the gap is highest in the realm of procedural fairness. |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trn:utwpde:0604&r=soc |
| By: | Maristella Botticini; Zvi Eckstein |
| Abstract: | From the end of the second century C.E., Judaism enforced a religious norm requiring any Jewish father to educate his children. We present evidence supporting our thesis that this exogenous change in the religious and social norm had a major influence on Jewish economic and demographic history. First, the high individual and community cost of educating children in subsistence farming economies (2nd to 7th centuries) prompted voluntary conversions, which account for a large share of the reduction in the size of the Jewish population from about 4.5 million to 1.2 million. Second, the Jewish farmers who invested in education, gained the comparative advantage and incentive to enter skilled occupations during the vast urbanization in the newly developed Muslim Empire (7th and 8th centuries) and they actually did select themselves into these occupations. Third, as merchants the Jews invested even more in education–a pre-condition for the extensive mailing network and common court system that endowed them with trading skills demanded all over the world. Fourth, the Jews generated a voluntary diaspora by migrating within the Muslim Empire, and later to western Europe where they were invited to settle as high skill intermediaries by local rulers. By 1200, the Jews were living in hundreds of towns from England and Spain in the West to China and India in the East. Fifth, the majority of world Jewry (about one million) lived in the Near East when the Mongol invasions in the 1250s brought this region back to a subsistence farming economy in which many Jews found it difficult to enforce the religious norm regarding education, and hence, voluntarily converted, exactly as it had happened centuries earlier. |
| Keywords: | social norms, religion, human capital, Jewish economic and demographic history, occupational choice, migration. |
| JEL: | J1 J2 N3 O1 Z12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wpaper:2&r=soc |
| By: | Olivier Armantier |
| Abstract: | The influence of relative wealth on fairness considerations is analyzed in an ultimatum game experiment in which participants receive large and widely unequal initial endowments. Subjects initially demonstrate a concern for fairness. With time however, behavior becomes at odds with both subgame perfection and fairness. Evidence of learning is detected for both proposers and receivers in the estimation of a structural reinforcement learning model. The estimation results suggest that, guided by foregone best responses and an acquired sense of deservingness, rich subjects become more selfish, while poor subjects, influenced only by their own experience, learn to tolerate this behavior. <P>L’influence de la richesse relative sur les préoccupations d’équité est analysée dans un jeu de l’ultimatum dans lequel les participants reçoivent d’importantes dotations initiales largement inégales. Au départ, les sujets démontrent un soucis d’équité. Cependant, avec le temps, leur comportement s’éloigne de la perfection en sous-jeux ainsi que de l’équité. L’estimation d’un modèle structurel d’apprentissage par renforcement montre des signes d’apprentissage autant chez les sujets qui proposent que chez les receveurs. Les résultats de l’estimation suggèrent que, lorsque guidés par les meilleures réponses possibles et par un sens acquis de ce qui leur est dû, les sujets riches deviennent plus égoïstes, alors que les sujets pauvres, influencés uniquement par leur expérience personnelle, apprennent à tolérer ce comportement. |
| Keywords: | experimental economics, fairness, learning, ultimatum game, apprentissage, économie expérimentale, équité, jeu de l’ultimatum |
| JEL: | C91 C78 C13 C78 C13 C78 C13 C15 |
| Date: | 2006–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2006s-13&r=soc |
| By: | Subhayu Bandyopadhyay (Department of Economics, West Virginia University); Cletus C. Coughlin (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis); Howard J. Wall (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new estimates of the effects of ethnic network on U.S. exports. In line with recent research, our dataset is a panel of exports from U.S. states to 29 foreign countries. Our analysis departs from the literature in two ways, both of which show that previous estimates of the ethnic-network elasticity of trade are sensitive to the restrictions imposed on the estimated models. Our first departure is to control for unobserved heterogeneity with properly specified fixed effects, which we can do because our dataset contains a time dimension absent from previous studies. Our second departure is to remove the restriction that the network effect is the same for all ethnicities. We find that ethnic-network effects are much larger than has been estimated previously, although they are important only for a subset of countries. |
| Keywords: | Ethnic networks, state exports |
| JEL: | F10 R10 |
| Date: | 2005 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wvu:wpaper:05-15&r=soc |
| By: | Laura Zimmermann; Liliya Gataullina; Amelie Constant; Klaus F. Zimmermann |
| Abstract: | The paper investigates the role of human capital for migrants' ethnic ties towards their home and host countries. Pre-migration characteristics dominate ethnic self-identification. Human capital acquired in the host country does not affect the attachment to the receiving country. |
| Keywords: | Ethnic self-identification, first-generation migrants, gender, ethnicity, human capital |
| JEL: | F22 J15 J16 J24 Z10 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp616&r=soc |
| By: | Jim Engle-Warnick; Andreas Leibbrandt |
| Abstract: | We alter who gets the last word on the outcome in three different types of trust games: the first mover, the second mover, or, a committee comprised of first and second movers. The committee functions in a manner similar to a peer review process, in which experienced subjects pass judgment on the outcome reached by a different pair of subjects. Surprisingly, giving the first mover the last word benefits the second mover. Letting the committee decide increases the first mover’s trust. And first and second movers pass different types of judgments when they act as a committee. <P>Au cours de trois jeux de confiance différents, nous alternons la personne qui aura le dernier mot sur le résultat : le premier joueur, le deuxième joueur, ou un comité (à qui revient la décision) composé du premier et du second joueur. Ce comité fonctionne de manière similaire à la révision conventionnelle par les pairs, où des joueurs expérimentés passent un jugement sur les résultats préalablement réalisés par deux joueurs différents. Étonnamment, donner le dernier mot au premier joueur donne l’avantage au deuxième joueur. D’autre part, laisser le comité prendre la décision augmente la confiance du premier joueur. Finalement, les premiers et seconds joueurs passent différents types de jugements lorsqu’ils font partie d’un comité. |
| Keywords: | experimental economics, peer review, social norm, social preferences, third-party punishment, trust, confiance, économie expérimentale, normes sociales, préférences sociales, révision par les pairs, sanctions par une tierce personne |
| JEL: | C92 |
| Date: | 2006–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2006s-12&r=soc |
| By: | Horst Siebert |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses the goal conflict between social protection and economic growth as well as employment. Taking the German economy as an example for the large continental economies of Old Europe, it analyzes twenty mechanisms that affect the fundamentals of the economy negatively and imply low growth and high unemployment. An empirical index is constructed. In the period 1960-2005, an increase in the social protection index goes together with a decline in the GDP growth rate by 2.6 percentage points. |
| Keywords: | Social protection, Economic growth, Unemployment, Mechanisms for a poor dynamics, Old Europe, Erosion |
| JEL: | H J K P |
| Date: | 2006–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kie:kieliw:1291&r=soc |
| By: | Shultziner, Doron (Politics & International Relations Department, Oxford University); Dattner, Arnon (Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University) |
| Abstract: | This paper critically examines the state of the literature in evolutionary biology regarding theories of altruistic behavior. The shared theoretical problems of Kin-selection and Group-selection are examined. Theoretical and severe methodological problems of Reciprocal Altruism theory are also discussed. We offer new conceptual clarifications of the Handicap Principle theory regarding costs and benefits to both the donor and the recipient of an altruistic act. We also summarize supportive empirical studies which demonstrate how Handicap Principle theory easily explains altruistic behavior on a different logic than the one employed by other theories of altruistic behavior. Finally, we discuss the phenomenon of one-shot altruism in order to evaluate, and distinguish between, the predictive and explanatory power of different theories of altruistic behavior. |
| Keywords: | altruism; altruistic behavior; theories of altruism; handicap principle; reciprocity; reciprocal altruism; group selection; kin selection; one-shot altruism |
| JEL: | A12 Z00 |
| Date: | 2006–09–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0103&r=soc |
| By: | Philip Shaw (University of Connecticut); Marina-Selini Katsaiti (University of Connecticut); Marius Jurgilas (University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | The goal of this paper is to revisit the influential work of Mauro [1995] focusing on the strength of his results under weak identification. He finds a negative impact of corruption on investment and economic growth that appears to be robust to endogeneity when using two-stage least squares (2SLS). Since the inception of Mauro [1995], much literature has focused on 2SLS methods revealing the dangers of estimation and thus inference under weak identification. We reproduce the original results of Mauro [1995] with a high level of confidence and show that the instrument used in the original work is in fact 'weak' as defined by Staiger and Stock [1997]. Thus we update the analysis using a test statistic robust to weak instruments. Our results suggest that under Mauro's original model there is a high probability that the parameters of interest are locally almost unidentified in multivariate specifications. To address this problem, we also investigate other instruments commonly used in the corruption literature and obtain similar results. |
| Keywords: | Corruption, Growth, Weak Identification, LAU |
| JEL: | C31 D73 |
| Date: | 2006–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2006-17&r=soc |
| By: | Jennifer Hunt (McGill University, NBER, CEPR, DIW Berlin and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | Using cross-country and Peruvian data, I show that victims of misfortune, particularly crime victims, are much more likely than non-victims to bribe public officials. Misfortune increases victims’ demand for public services, raising bribery indirectly, and also increases victims’ propensity to bribe certain officials conditional on using them, possibly because victims are desperate, vulnerable, or demanding services particularly prone to corruption. The effect is strongest for bribery of the police, where the increase in bribery comes principally through increased use of the police. For the judiciary the effect is also strong, and for some misfortunes is composed equally of an increase in use and an increase in bribery conditional on use. The expense and disutility of bribing thus compound the misery brought by misfortune. |
| Keywords: | corruption, bribery, development |
| JEL: | H1 K4 O1 |
| Date: | 2006–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2278&r=soc |
| By: | Maristella Botticini; Zvi Eckstein |
| Abstract: | Path dependence in occupations refers to the observed occupational distribution in a population or in a sub-population at a point in time that depends on changes that occurred years or centuries earlier. Path dependence in occupations can be the outcome of the cumulative concentration of certain productive activities in specific regions over time, it can emerge through the effect of parental income or wealth on offspring’s occupations and incomes, or it can be the outcome of group effects. Some historical cases are selected to illustrate the various mechanisms through which path dependence in occupations can emerge or disappear. |
| Keywords: | path dependence, occupational structure, social norms, trade diasporas, Jewish occupational selection, feminization of occupations, African-American occupational transition |
| JEL: | J1 J2 J6 J7 N3 O1 Z12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wpaper:3&r=soc |
| By: | Kenny, Charles |
| Abstract: | There are significant weaknesses in some of the traditional justifications for assuming that aid will foster development. This paper looks at what the cross-country aid effectiveness literature and World Bank Operations Evaluation Department reviews have suggested about effective aid, first in terms of promoting income growth, and then for promoting other goals. This review forms the basis for a discussion of recommendations to improve aid effectiveness and a discussion of effective aid allocation. Given the multiple potential objectives for aid, there is no one right answer. However, it appears that there are a number of reforms to aid practices and distribution that might help to deliver a more significant return to aid resources. We should provide aid where institutions are already strong, where they can be strengthened with the help of donor resources, or where they can be bypassed with limited damage to existing institutional capacity. The importance of institutions to aid outcomes, as well as the fungibility of aid flows, suggests that programmatic aid should be expanded in countries with strong institutions, while project aid should be supported based on its ability to transfer knowledge and test new practices and support global public good provision rather than (merely) as a tool of financial resource transfer. The importance of institutions also suggests that we should be cautious in our expectations regarding the results of increased aid flows. |
| Keywords: | Development Economics & Aid Effectiveness,Banks & Banking Reform,School Health,Population Policies,Economic Theory & Research |
| Date: | 2006–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4005&r=soc |