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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
| By: | Cox, James C. (Georgia State University); Orman, Wafa Hakim (University of Alabama in Huntsville) |
| Abstract: | Trust is a crucial component of social capital. We use an experimental moonlighting game with a representative sample of the U.S. population, oversampling immigrants, to study trust, positive, and negative reciprocity between first-generation immigrants and native-born Americans as a measure of immigrant assimilation. We also survey subjects in order to relate trusting and trustworthy behavior with demographic characteristics and traditional, survey-based measures of social capital. We find that immigrants are as trusting as native-born U.S. citizens when faced with another native-born citizen, but do not trust other immigrants. Immigrants appear to be less trustworthy overall but this finding disappears when we control for demographic variables and the amount sent by the first mover. The length of time an immigrant has been a naturalized U.S. citizen appears to increase trustworthiness but does not affect trusting behavior. Women and older people are less likely to trust, but no more or less trustworthy. |
| Keywords: | moonlighting game, trust, reciprocity, immigration, experiment |
| JEL: | C93 J61 |
| Date: | 2010–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5063&r=soc |
| By: | Furtado, Delia (University of Connecticut); Theodoropoulos, Nikolaos (University of Cyprus) |
| Abstract: | Social networks are commonly understood to play a large role in the labor market success of immigrants. Using 2000 U.S. Census data, this paper examines whether access to native networks, as measured by marriage to a native, increases the probability of immigrant employment. We start by confirming in both least squares and instrumental variables frameworks that marriage to a native indeed increases immigrant employment rates. Next, we show that the returns to marrying a native are not likely to arise solely from legal status acquired through marriage or characteristics of native spouses. We then present several pieces of evidence suggesting that networks obtained through marriage play an important part in explaining the relationship between marriage decisions and employment. |
| Keywords: | immigration, marriage, employment, networks |
| JEL: | J61 J12 J21 |
| Date: | 2010–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5080&r=soc |
| By: | Fafchamps, Marcel; Goyal, Sanjeev; Leij, Marco J. van der |
| Abstract: | The matching of individuals in teams is a key element in the functioning of an economy. The network of social ties can potentially transmit important information on abilities and reputations and also help mitigate matching frictions by facilitating interactions among “screened” individuals. We conjecture that the probability of two individuals forming a team falls in the distance between the two individuals in the network of existing social ties. The objective of this paper is to empirically test this conjecture. We examine the formation of coauthor relations among economists over a twenty-year period. Our principal finding is that a new collaboration emerges faster among two researchers if they are “closer” in the existing coauthor network among economists. This proximity effect on collaboration is strong: Being at a network distance of 2 instead of 3, for instance, raises the probability of initiating a collaboration by 27%. |
| JEL: | D83 D85 C78 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ner:oxford:http://economics.ouls.ox.ac.uk/14800/&r=soc |
| By: | Gil S. Epstein (Department of Economics, Bar Ilan University, IZA and CReAM); Yosef Mealem (Netanya Academic College, Netanya, Israel) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we consider the interaction between local workers and migrants in the production process of a firm. Both local workers and migrants can invest effort in assimilation activities in order to increase the assimilation of the migrants into the firm and so by increase their interaction and production activities. We consider the effect, the relative size (in the firm) of each group and the cost of activities, has on the assimilation process of the migrants. |
| Keywords: | Assimilation; Contracts; Ethnicity; Market Structure; Networks; harassment. |
| JEL: | D74 F23 I20 J61 L14 |
| Date: | 2010–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:201016&r=soc |
| By: | de Meza, David (London School of Economics); Irlenbusch, Bernd (University of Cologne); Reyniers, Diane (London School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This high-stakes experiment investigates the effect on buyers of mandatory disclosures concerning an insurance policy's value for money (the claims ratio) and the seller's commission. These information disclosures have virtually no effect despite most buyers claiming to value such information. Instead, our data reveal that whether the subject is generally trusting plays an important role. Trust is clearly associated with greater willingness to pay for insurance. Unlike in previous work, trust in our setting is not about obligations being fulfilled. The contract is complete, simple and the possibility of breach is negligible. However, as for much B2C insurance marketing, face-to-face selling plays a crucial role in our experimental design. Trusting buyers are more suggestible, so take advice more readily and buy more insurance, although they are no more risk averse than the uninsured. Moreover, trusting buyers feel less pressured by sellers, and are more confident in their decisions which suggests that they are easier to persuade. Therefore, in markets where persuasion is important, public policy designed to increase consumer information is likely to be ineffective. |
| Keywords: | insurance selling, trust, persuasion |
| JEL: | C91 G22 M30 |
| Date: | 2010–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5060&r=soc |
| By: | Juliette Rouchier (GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - Université de la Méditerranée - Aix-Marseille II - Université Paul Cézanne - Aix-Marseille III - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - CNRS : UMR6579); Paola Tubaro (Department of International Business and Economics - University of Greenwich) |
| Abstract: | We aim to identify the conditions under which social influence enables emergence of a shared opinion orientation among members of an organization over time, when membership is subject to continuous but partial turnover. We study an intra-organizational advice network that channels social influence over time, with a flow of joiners and leavers at regular intervals. We have been particularly inspired by a study of the Commercial Court of Paris, a judicial institution whose members are peer-elected businesspeople and are partly replaced every year. We develop an agent-based simulation of advice network evolution which incorporates a model of opinion dynamics based on a refinement of Deuant's relative agreement", combining opinion with a measure of "uncertainty" or openness to social influence. We focus on the effects on opinion of three factors, namely criteria for advisor selection, duration of membership in the organization, and new members' uncertainty. We show that criteria for interlocutor choice matter: a shared opinion is sustained over time if members select colleagues at least as experienced as themselves. Convergence of opinions appears in other congurations too, but the impact of initial opinion fades in time. Duration has an impact to the extent that the longer the time spent in the group, the stronger the possibility for convergence towards a common opinion. Finally, higher uncertainty reinforces convergence while lower uncertainty leads to coexistence of multiple opinions. |
| Keywords: | social influence, advice networks, intra-organizational networks, opinion dynamics, agent-based simulation |
| Date: | 2010–07–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00503193_v1&r=soc |
| By: | Scott Atran (IJN - Institut Jean-Nicod - CNRS : UMR8129 - Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris - ENS Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)); Joseph Henrich (Dept of Economics & Dept of Psychology - University of British Columbia) |
| Abstract: | Understanding religion requires explaining why supernatural beliefs, devotions, and rituals are both universal and variable across cultures, and why religion is so often associated with both large-scale cooperation and enduring group conflict. Emerging lines of research suggest that these oppositions result from the convergence of three processes. First, the interaction of certain reliably developing cognitive processes, such as our ability to infer the presence of intentional agents, favors—as an evolutionary by-product—the spread of certain kinds of counterintuitive concepts. Second, participation in rituals and devotions involving costly displays exploits various aspects of our evolved psychology to deepen people's commitment to both supernatural agents and religious communities. Third, competition among societies and organizations with different faith-based beliefs and practices has increasingly connected religion with both within-group prosociality and between-group enmity. This connection has strengthened dramatically in recent millennia, as part of the evolution of complex societies, and is important to understanding cooperation and conflict in today's world. |
| Keywords: | by-product hypothesis, credibility enhancing displays, cultural 40 transmission, cooperation, group competition, high gods,min |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:ijn_00505193_v1&r=soc |
| By: | Mariana Blanco; Bogaçhan Çelen; Andrew Schotter |
| Abstract: | The theory of reciprocity is predicated on the assumption that people are willing to reward nice or kind acts and to punish unkind ones. This assumption raises the question as to how to define kindness. In this paper we offer a new definition of kindness that we call “blame-freeness.” Put most simply, blame-freeness states that in judging whether player i has been kind or unkind to player j in a social situation, player j would have to put himself in the strategic position of player i, while retaining his preferences, and ask if he would have acted in a manner that was worse than i did under identical circumstances. If j would have acted in a more unkind manner than i acted, then we say that j does not blame i for his behavior. If, however, j would have been nicer than i was, then we say that “j blames i” for his actions (i’s actions were blameworthy). We consider this notion a natural, intuitive and empirically relevant way to explain the motives of people engaged in reciprocal behavior. After developing the conceptual framework, we then test this concept in a laboratory experiment involving tournaments and find significant support for the theory. |
| Date: | 2010–06–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000092:007270&r=soc |
| By: | Gerlinde Fellner; Yoshio Iida; Sabine Kröger; Erika Seki |
| Abstract: | This article experimentally examines voluntary contributions when group members’ marginal returns to the public good vary. The experiment implements two marginal return types, low and high, and uses the information that members have about the heterogeneity to identify the applied contribution norm. We find that norms vary with the information environment. If agents are aware of the heterogeneity, contributions increase in general. However, high types contribute more than low types when contributions can be linked to the type of the donor but contribute less otherwise. Low types, on the other hand, contributes more than high types when group members are aware of the heterogeneity but contributions cannot be linked to types. Our results underline the importance of the information structure when persons with different abilities contribute to a joint project, as in the context of teamwork or charitable giving. |
| Keywords: | Public Goods, Voluntary contribution mechanism, Heterogeneity, Information, Norms |
| JEL: | C9 H41 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lvl:lacicr:1025&r=soc |
| By: | Rebitzer, James B. (Boston University); Taylor, Lowell J. (Carnegie Mellon University) |
| Abstract: | Employers structure pay and employment relationships to mitigate agency problems. A large literature in economics documents how the resolution of these problems shapes personnel policies and labor markets. For the most part, the study of agency in employment relationships relies on highly stylized assumptions regarding human motivation, e.g., that employees seek to earn as much money as possible with minimal effort. In this essay, we explore the consequences of introducing behavioral complexity and realism into models of agency within organizations. Specifically, we assess the insights gained by allowing employees to be guided by such motivations as the desire to compare favorably to others, the aspiration to contribute to intrinsically worthwhile goals, and the inclination to reciprocate generosity or exact retribution for perceived wrongs. More provocatively, from the standpoint of standard economics, we also consider the possibility that people are driven, in ways that may be opaque even to themselves, by the desire to earn social esteem or to shape and reinforce identity. |
| Keywords: | agency, motivation, employment relationships, behavioral economics |
| JEL: | D2 J0 M5 |
| Date: | 2010–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5058&r=soc |
| By: | Jean-Louis ARCAND; Adama BAH (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Développement International); Julien LABONNE |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we present a rent-seeking model of conflict, which highlights the role of ideology in determining whether the government or the rebels take the initiative. We use the model to interpret the impact of a large-scale Community-Driven Development project on civil conflict in the Philippines. The country is characterized by the presence of two rebel groups, the New People's Army (NPA) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), with two distinct ideologies. We use a unique geo-referenced panel dataset on the occurrence of conflicts in 2003 and 2006 gathered from local newspapers that we match with nationally representative household survey and budget data on all municipalities in the country. Consistent with our model's predictions, using a variety of estimation strategies, we find robust evidence that the project leads to a decline in MILF-related events and to an increase in NPA-related events. |
| Keywords: | Civil Conflict, foreign aid, Rent Seeking, Community-Driven Development, philippines |
| JEL: | O53 O22 F35 D74 D72 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdi:wpaper:1184&r=soc |
| By: | Ola Andersson (Stockholm School of Economics); Marieke Huysentruyt (London School of Economics & SITE at Stockholm School of Economics); Topi Miettinen (Aalto University, School of Economics & SITE, Stockholm School of Economics); Ute Stephan (Catholic University of Leuven) |
| Abstract: | We study the interaction of organizational culture and personal prosocial orientation in team work where teams compete against each other. In a computerized lab experiment with minimal group design, we prime subjects to two alternative organizational cultures emphasizing either self-enhancement or self-trancendence. We find that effort is highest in self-trancendent teams and prosocially oriented subjects perform better than proself-oriented under that culture. In any other value-culture-mechanism constellation, performance is worse and/or prosocials and proselves do not dier in provided effort. These findings point out the importance of a "triple-fit" of preferences, organizational culture and incentive mechanism. |
| Keywords: | Tournaments, Organizational Culture, Personal Values, Teams, Economic Incentives |
| JEL: | C91 D23 J33 M52 |
| Date: | 2010–07–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2010-046&r=soc |