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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
| By: | Katarzyna Growiec (Szkoła Wyższa Psychologii Społecznej); Jakub Growiec (National Bank of Poland, Economic Institute) |
| Abstract: | This paper demonstrates that bridging and bonding social capital as well as social trust interdependently affect individuals’ earnings and happiness. Based on crosssectional World Values Survey 2000 data on individuals from eight Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), we provide evidence that majority of citizens of these countries have likely fallen in a “low trust trap” where deficits of bridging social capital and trust reinforce each other in lowering individuals’ incomes and happiness. Apart from gradual modernization and economic growth, also increases in labor market participation are identified as a potential way out of this “trap”, because employed people in CEECs tend to have statistically significantly more bridging social capital and more trust. While assessing robustness of our empirical results, we have found a high risk of regressor endogeneity and omitted variables bias, generally overlooked in earlier studies. These issues are carefully addressed in the current contribution. |
| Keywords: | bridging social capital, bonding social capital, social trust, CEE countries, earnings, happiness |
| JEL: | D10 J20 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbp:nbpmis:94&r=soc |
| By: | Fiorillo, Damiano |
| Abstract: | The paper analyses the determinants of household recycling in Italy with particular emphasis on social behaviour. The econometric analysis is based on two waves - 1998 and 2000 - of the Multipurpose Household Survey conducted annually by the Italian Central Statistics Office. In Italy household recycling was substantially voluntary in the years from 1998 to 2000 with no monetary incentives or pecuniary sanctions. Five different materials are investigated: paper, glass, plastic, aluminium and food waste. The results of the probit regressions suggest that membership in organizations, church attendance, the habit of talking politics and reading newspapers are significantly correlated with household recycling behaviour, while gender, age and household income playing the biggest role. Our findings also show that the presence of recycling bins for waste improves household recycling behaviour for all materials whereas difficulty to reach recycling bins adversely affects household recycling outcomes. Household judgments on waste disposal charges have no effect on the recycling effort. As expected, residency in Southern Italy is associated with the lowest probability of recycling all materials. |
| Keywords: | Household recycling; social behaviour; social capital; recycling bins; flat fee |
| JEL: | Q53 C35 Z13 |
| Date: | 2011–09–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:33631&r=soc |
| By: | Eva-Maria Steiger (Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena); Ro'i Zultan |
| Abstract: | Transparency in teams can induce cooperation. We study contribution decisions by agents when previous decisions can be observed. We find that an information chain, in which each agent directly observes only the decision of her immediate predecessor, is at least as effective as a fully-transparent protocol in inducing cooperation under increasing returns to scale. In a comparable social dilemma, the information chain leads to high cooperation both when compared to a non-transparent protocol for early movers, and when compared to a fully-transparent protocol for late movers. we conclude that information chains facilitate cooperation by balancing positive and negative reciprocity. |
| Keywords: | team production, public goods, incentives, externality, information, transparency, conditional cooperation |
| JEL: | C72 C92 D21 J31 M52 |
| Date: | 2011–09–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2011-040&r=soc |
| By: | Kiss, Hubert Janos; Rosa-García, Alfonso |
| Abstract: | A distinctive feature of recent revolutions was the key role of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). In a simple model we assume that while social media allow to observe all previous decisions, mass media only give aggregate information about the state of a revolt. We show, first, that when individuals' willingness to revolt is publicly known, then both sorts of media foster a successful revolution. However, when willingness to revolt is private information, only social media ensure that a revolt succeeds, with mass media multiple outcomes are possible. This suggests that social media enhance the likelihood that a revolution triumphs more than traditional mass media. |
| Keywords: | social media; mass media; revolution; coordination game; sequential games |
| JEL: | D74 D02 C72 |
| Date: | 2011–09–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:33496&r=soc |
| By: | Thomas Bossuroy |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the individual determinants of ethnic identication using large sample surveys (about 30,000 respondents) representative of seven capitals of West-African countries. A small model that relates ethnic identication to an investment in ethnic capital suggests that individuals initially deprived of social or human capital resort to ethnicity to get socially inserted, and do even more so if their ethnic group itself is well inserted. Empirical results are consistent with this simple theory. First, education lowers ethnic salience. Second, ethnic identication is higher for uneducated unemployed or informal workers who seek a new or better job, and is further raised by the share of the individual's ethnic group integrated on the job market. Third, ethnic identication is higher among migrants, and raised by the share of the migrant's ethnic group that is employed. Group solidarity makes ethnic identity more salient for individuals deprived of other means for upward mobility. |
| Keywords: | Ethnicity, Identity, Social capital, Networks, Africa |
| JEL: | A13 A14 D74 O17 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rza:wpaper:242&r=soc |
| By: | Monstad, Karin (University of Bergen); Propper, Carol (University of Bristol); Salvanes, Kjell G. (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) |
| Abstract: | There is relatively little research on peer effects in teenage motherhood despite the fact that peer effects, and in particular social interaction within the family, are likely to be important. We estimate the impact of an elder sister’s teenage fertility on the teenage childbearing of their younger sister. To identify the peer effect we utilize an educational reform that impacted on the elder sister’s teenage fertility. Our main result is that within families, teen births tend to be contagious and the effect is larger where siblings are close in age and for women from low resource households. |
| Keywords: | Teenage pregnancy; spillover effects; education. |
| JEL: | I21 J13 J24 |
| Date: | 2011–07–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2011_012&r=soc |
| By: | Dreber, Anna (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics); Ellingsen, Tore (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics); Johannesson, Magnus (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics); Rand, David (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | Many previous experiments document that behavior in multi-person settings responds to the name of the game and the labeling of strategies. Usually these studies cannot tell whether frames affect preferences or beliefs. In this Dictator game study, we investigate whether social framing effects are also present when only one of the subjects makes a decision, in which case the frame may only affect preferences. We find that behavior is insensitive to social framing. |
| Keywords: | beliefs; preferences; framing effects; altruism; cooperation |
| JEL: | C70 C91 D64 |
| Date: | 2011–09–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:hastef:0738&r=soc |
| By: | Francesco Lissoni; Patrick Llerena; Bulat Sanditov |
| Abstract: | · Using data on patent applications at European Patent Office, we examine the structural properties of networks of inventors in France in different technologies, and how they depend from the inventive activity of scientists from universities and public research organizations (PROs). We revisit earlier findings on small world properties of social networks of inventors, and propose more rigorous tests of such hypothesis. We find that academic and PRO inventors contribute significantly to patenting in science‐based fields. Such contribution is decisive for the emergence of small world properties. |
| Keywords: | networks, inventors, academic patenting, small world. |
| JEL: | O31 O34 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2011-18&r=soc |
| By: | Gibbons, Steve (London School of Economics); Silva, Olmo (Harvard Kennedy School); Weinhardt, Felix (London School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We estimate the effect of neighbours' characteristics and prior achievements on teenage students' educational and behavioural outcomes using census data on several cohorts of secondary school students in England. Our research design is based on changes in neighbourhood composition caused explicitly by residential migration amongst students in our dataset. The longitudinal nature and detail of the data allows us to control for student unobserved characteristics, neighbourhood fixed effects and time trends, school-by-cohort fixed effects, as well as students' observable attributes and prior attainments. The institutional setting also allows us to distinguish between neighbours who attend the same or different schools, and thus examine interactions between school and neighbourhood peers. Overall, our results provide evidence that peers in the neighbourhood have no effect on test scores, but have a small effect on behavioural outcomes, such as attitudes towards schooling and anti-social behaviour. |
| Keywords: | peer and neighbourhood effects, cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes, secondary schools |
| JEL: | C21 I20 H75 R23 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5980&r=soc |
| By: | Kuhn, Peter J. (University of California, Santa Barbara); Villeval, Marie Claire (CNRS, GATE) |
| Abstract: | Are women disproportionately attracted to work environments where cooperation rather than competition is rewarded? This paper reports the results of a real-effort experiment in which participants choose between an individual compensation scheme and a team-based payment scheme. We find that women are more likely than men to select team-based compensation in our baseline treatment, but women and men join teams with equal frequency when we add an efficiency advantage to team production. Using a simple structural discrete choice framework to reconcile these facts, we show that three elements can explain the observed patterns in the team-entry gender gap: (1) a gender gap in confidence in others (i.e. women are less pessimistic about their prospective teammates' relative ability), (2) a greater responsiveness among men to instrumental reasons for joining teams, and (3) a greater "pure" preference for working in a team environment among women. |
| Keywords: | gender, cooperation, self-selection, confidence, experiment |
| JEL: | C91 J16 J24 J31 M5 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5999&r=soc |