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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
| By: | Buerker, Matthias (OECD, Paris); Minerva, G. Alfredo (University Bologna) |
| Abstract: | We characterize how the size distribution of plants, within narrowly defined industries, changed in Italy over a ten-year time span, and relate this to the stock of civic capital at the provincial level. Data on plant size come from the 1991 and 2001 Italian censuses. Civic capital turns out to have a positive effect on both the average and standard deviation of size. Looking at several precise points of the plant size distribution, we find that it shifts toward the right and becomes more dispersed where civic capital is high. The potential endogeneity of current civic capital is addressed by instrumenting it with historical variables. Our main conclusion is that the geographic variation in the stock of civic capital poses substantial constraints on plants' ability to expand. Understanding this is the key for the implementation of effective industrial policies. |
| JEL: | A13 D23 L20 R12 |
| Date: | 2012–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:ucdeco:12-03&r=soc |
| By: | Attanasi, Giuseppe; Casoria, Fortuna; Centorrino, Samuele; Urso, Giulia |
| Abstract: | In this paper we show how the investment in cultural events may encourage the building of social capital and foster the development of local communities. We rely on a casestudy that we conducted about the socio-economic impact of the Festival “La Notte della Taranta”, the most important European music festival dedicated to traditional music (about 170.000 participants per year), on the sub-region of southern Italy where it is held. Our evidence is based on a large survey, consisting of nearly 10.000 interviews to Festival participants over a span of five editions (2007-2011). A primary result is that the initial economic investment in the Festival has brought a short-term return in terms of touristic attraction worth more than two times as much. More importantly, our results indicate that a cultural festival, despite being a mass gathering, is able to create strong bonds among its participants and between them and the area where the event takes place. Although these bonds are “instantaneous”, i.e. temporally restricted to the duration of the event, they are positively correlated with the economic impact of the event on the territory. |
| Keywords: | Cultural event, economic impact, social capital, greatly motivated tourist |
| Date: | 2012–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:25758&r=soc |
| By: | Christian Thoeni (University of St.Gallen); Simon Gaechter (University of Nottingham) |
| Abstract: | Substantial evidence suggests the behavioral relevance of social preferences and also the importance of social influence effects (“peer effects”). Yet, little is known about how peer effects and social preferences are related. In a three-person gift-exchange experiment we find causal evidence for peer effects in voluntary cooperation: agents’ efforts are positively related despite the absence of material payoff interdependencies. We confront this result with major theories of social preferences which predict that efforts are unrelated, or negatively related. Some theories allow for positively-related efforts but cannot explain most observations. Conformism, norm following and considerations of social esteem are candidate explanations. |
| Keywords: | social preferences, voluntary cooperation, peer effects, reflection problem, gift-exchange; conformism; social norms; social esteem |
| JEL: | C92 D03 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2011-09&r=soc |
| By: | Simon Gaechter (University of Nottingham); Esther Kessler (University College London); Manfred Koenigstein (Universitaet Erfurt) |
| Abstract: | Efficiency under contractual incompleteness often requires voluntary cooperation in situations where self-regarding incentives for contractual compliance are present as well. Here we provide a comprehensive experimental analysis based on the gift-exchange game of how explicit and implicit incentives affect cooperation. We first show that there is substantial cooperation under non-incentive compatible contracts. Incentive-compatible contracts induce best-reply effort and crowd out any voluntary cooperation. Further experiments show that this result is robust to two important variables: experiencing Trust contracts without any incentives and implicit incentives coming from repeated interaction. Implicit incentives have a strong positive effect on effort only under non-incentive compatible contracts. |
| Keywords: | principal-agent games; gift-exchange experiments; incomplete contracts, explicit incentives; implicit incentives; repeated games; separability; experiments |
| JEL: | C70 C90 |
| Date: | 2011–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2011-06&r=soc |
| By: | Pablo Branas-Garza (GLoBE, University of Granada and Economic Science Institute, Chapman University); Antonio M. Espin (GLoBE, University of Granada); Filippos Exadaktylos (GLoBE, University of Granada) |
| Abstract: | Economic experiments are usually conducted with university students who voluntarily choose to participate. Outside as well as within the discipline, there is some concern about how this “particular” subject pool may systematically produce biased results. Focusing on social preferences, this study employs a representative sample of a city’s population and reports behavioral data for five experimental decisions. The dataset allows for a ceteris paribus comparison between self-selected students (i.e. the standard subject pool) and the representative population. We demonstrate that in spite of volunteers’ and students’ effects, experimental subjects seem to be an appropriate subject pool for the study of social preferences. |
| Keywords: | experimental economics, external validity, subject pool, selfselection bias, field experiment. |
| JEL: | C90 D03 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chu:wpaper:12-11&r=soc |
| By: | Alessia Isopi (School of Economics, University of Nottingham); Daniele Nosenzo (School of Economics, University of Nottingham); Chris Starmer (School of Economics, University of Nottingham) |
| Abstract: | This paper reports an experiment designed to test whether prior consultation within a group affects subsequent individual decision making in tasks where demonstrability of correct solutions is low. In our experiment subjects considered two paintings created by two different artists and were asked to guess which artist made each painting. We observed answers given by individuals under two treatments: in one, subjects were allowed the opportunity to consult with other participants before making their private decisions; in the other there was no such opportunity. Our primary findings are that subjects in the first treatment evaluate the opportunity to consult positively but they perform significantly worse and earn significantly less. |
| Keywords: | Consultation; Decision making; Group decisions; Individual decisions |
| JEL: | C91 C92 D80 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2011-08&r=soc |
| By: | Carlsson, Fredrik (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Johansson-Stenman, Olof (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Pham, Khanh Nam (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | We measure people’s prosocial behavior, in terms of voluntary money and labor time contributions to an archetypical public good, a bridge, and in terms of voluntary money contributions in a public good game, using the same non-student sample in rural Vietnam at four different points in time from 2005 to 2011. Two of the experiments are natural experiment, one is a field experiment and one is a public good experiment. Since the experiments were conducted far apart in time, the potentially confounding effects of moral licensing and moral cleansing are presumably small, if existing at all. Despite large contextual variations, we find a strong positive and statistically significant correlation between voluntary contributions in these experiments, whether correcting for other covariates or not. This suggests that pro-social preferences are fairly stable over long periods of time and contexts.<p> |
| Keywords: | natural field experiment; preference stability; social preferences; moral licensing; moral cleansing. |
| JEL: | C93 H41 |
| Date: | 2012–04–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0531&r=soc |
| By: | Proto, Eugenio (Department of Economics, University of Warwick); Rustichini, Aldo (Department of Economics, University of Minnesota) |
| Abstract: | We show that personality traits mediate the effect of income on Life Satisfaction. The effect is strong in the case of Neuroticism, which measures the sensitivity to threat and punishment, in both the British Household Panel Survey and the German Socioeconomic Panel. Neuroticism increases the usually observed concavity of the relationship : Individuals with higher Neuroticism score enjoy income more than those with lower score if they are poorer and enjoy income less if they are richer. When the interaction between income and neuroticism is introduced, income does not have significant effect on his own. To interpret the results, we present a simple model where we assume that (i) Life Satisfaction is dependent from the gap between aspired and realized income, and this is modulated by Neuroticism and (ii) income increases in aspirations with a slope less than unity, so that the gap between aspired and realized income increase with aspirations. From the estimation of this model we argue that poorer tend to overshoot in their aspiration, while rich tend to under-shoot. The estimation of the model also shows substantial effect of traits on income JEL classification: D03 ; D870 ; C33 |
| Keywords: | Life Satisfaction ; Household Income ; Personality Theory ; Neuroticism |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:988&r=soc |
| By: | patel, saurin; sarkissian, sergei |
| Abstract: | The literature has conflicting reports regarding the impact of group decision making on performance. We first observe that in mutual fund studies this results from large discrepancies in reported managerial structures between CRSP and Morningstar databases reaching on average 20% per year. Then we show that with more superior Morningstar data team-managed funds exhibit higher risk-adjusted returns than single-managed funds. The performance spread is present across all fund categories, except aggressive funds, and is robust to the inclusion of fund- and manager-level controls. Across various managerial structures, the largest team-induced gains are reached among funds managed by three individuals. Furthermore, teams significantly improve fund performance when funds are located in financial centers, reflecting larger networking potential and/or better skills of people who reside in larger cities. This improvement is achieved in teams more homogeneous in age and education. In spite of higher returns however, team-managed funds are not riskier than single-managed funds in terms of market exposure or idiosyncratic volatility. Finally, team-managed funds trade less aggressively and are able to generate extra inflows for their funds. Thus, collective decision making is beneficial, but its scale depends on team size and diversity as well as its geographic location. |
| Keywords: | Knowledge spillover; Management structure; Performance evaluation; Team diversity |
| JEL: | G23 J24 |
| Date: | 2012–04–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:38496&r=soc |