nep-soc New Economics Papers
on Social Norms and Social Capital
Issue of 2012‒11‒24
five papers chosen by
Fabio Sabatini
Universita' la Sapienza

  1. "United we stand divided we fall": maternal social participation and children's nutritional status in Peru By Favara, Marta
  2. The Desire to Influence Others By Abdolkarim Sadrieh; Marina Schröder
  3. Group Size and Cooperation among Strangers By John Duffy; Huan Xie
  4. Evolution of Social networks By Christoph Kuzmics; Mathias Staudigl; Brian W. Rogers
  5. Providing Agri-environmental Public Goods through Collective Action: Lessons from New Zealand Case Studies By Uetake, Tetsuya

  1. By: Favara, Marta
    Abstract: In previous literature, social capital has been hypothesized as a substitute for other forms of capital, such as physical and human capital. This paper contributes to this literature, studying the association between mothers'access to social capital via participation in community organizations and their children's nutritional status at 1 and 5 years. Using the Peruvian sample of the Young Lives project, this study suggests that, where human capital is scarce, social capital might have important implications for child development. Maternal social capital is positively associated with height at 1 year old for those children whose mothers have no formal education. No significant association is found at 5 years of age.
    Keywords: Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Population Policies,Social Capital,Social Inclusion&Institutions,Social Cohesion
    Date: 2012–11–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6264&r=soc
  2. By: Abdolkarim Sadrieh (Faculty of Economics and Management, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg); Marina Schröder (Faculty of Economics and Management, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg)
    Abstract: We introduce the give-or-destroy game that allows us to fully elicit an individual's social preference schedule. We find that about one third of the population exhibits both pro-social and anti-social preferences that are independent of payoff comparisons with those who are affected. We call this type of preference a desire to influence others. The other two thirds of the population consist to almost equal parts of payoff maximizers and pro-socials. Furthermore, we find that full information and experimenter demand may increase the extent of pro-social preferences, but neither treatment affects the extent of anti-social preferences or the distribution of social types in the population.
    Keywords: altruism, joy of destruction, other-regarding behavior, giving and destruction, kindness, fairness, spite, envy
    JEL: A13 C90 D31 D63 D64
    Date: 2012–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mag:wpaper:120027&r=soc
  3. By: John Duffy (University of Pittsburgh); Huan Xie (Concordia University)
    Abstract: We study how group size affects cooperation in an infinitely repeated n-player Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game. In each repetition of the game, groups of size n less than or equal to M are randomly and anonymously matched from a fixed population of size M to play the n-player PD stage game. We provide conditions for which the contagious strategy (Kandori, 1992) sustains a social norm of cooperation among all M players. Our main finding is that if agents are sufficiently patient, a social norm of society-wide cooperation becomes easier to sustain under the contagious strategy as n converges to M.
    Keywords: Cooperation, Social Norms, Group Size, Repeated Games, Random Matching, Prisoner's Dilemma
    JEL: C72 C73 C78 Z13
    Date: 2012–09–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crd:wpaper:12010&r=soc
  4. By: Christoph Kuzmics (Bielefeld University); Mathias Staudigl (Bielefeld University); Brian W. Rogers
    Abstract: Modeling the evolution of networks is central to our understanding of modern large communication systems, such as theWorld-Wide-Web, as well as economic and social networks. The research on social and economic networks is truly interdisciplinary and the number of modeling strategies and concepts is enormous. In this survey we present some modeling approaches, covering classical random graph models and game-theoretic models, which may be used to provide a unified framework to model and analyze the evolution of networks.
    Date: 2012–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bie:wpaper:470&r=soc
  5. By: Uetake, Tetsuya
    Abstract: Agriculture is a provider of food and, to a certain extent, public goods such as biodiversity and landscape, but it can also have negative impacts on natural assets such as biodiversity and water quality. In addition to implementing policies that target individual farmers, different approaches are needed to promote collective action. The literature review and three New Zealand case studies (Sustainable Farming Fund, East Coast Forestry Project and North Otago Irrigation Company) have identified some findings including benefits and barriers of collective action and key factors for its success. Collective action should be given serious consideration in addressing agri-environmental problems.
    Keywords: Collective action, public goods, agri-environmental policy, social capital, Agribusiness, Environmental Economics and Policy, Public Economics,
    Date: 2012–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:nzar12:136071&r=soc

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