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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
| By: | Matthias Bürker (Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs and Local Development, OECD); G. Alfredo Minerva (Department of Economics, University of 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. |
| Keywords: | Civic Capital, Cooperation, Opportunism, Plant Size Distribution, Trust |
| JEL: | A13 D23 L20 R12 |
| Date: | 2012–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2012.81&r=soc |
| By: | Di Bartolomeo Giovanni; Papa Stefano |
| Abstract: | Our paper aims to investigate conditional and unconditional motivations in investment games by using a counterfactual methodology and attitudinal survey and self-reported information about participants’ behavior. We have combined different methodologies to verify the coherence between participants’ actions, beliefs and perceptions |
| Keywords: | Conditional and unconditional other-regarding preferences, triadic approach, investment game, frame effect |
| JEL: | D03 C91 D83 |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ter:wpaper:0099&r=soc |
| By: | Chen, Shu-Heng; Chang, Chia-Ling; Wen, Ming-Chang |
| Abstract: | We construct an agent-based New Keynesian DSGE model with different social network structures to investigate the significance of network topologies to macroeconomic stability. According to our simulation results, we find that the more liquid the information flow, the higher the stability of the economy. Furthermore, the speed of information dissemination and the degree of clustering among agents may give rise to an adverse effect on economic stability. Finally, we find that the scale-free network will lead to the most dramatic economic fluctuations. The result is ascribed to the scale-free network's high centrality. It indicates that the opinion leaders may bring about a conglomerate effect that will cause fluctuations in the economy. -- |
| Keywords: | New Keynesian DSGE models,macroeconomic stability,social networks,Information dissemination,herding effect,agent-based model |
| JEL: | D84 E12 C63 E3 E32 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:20134&r=soc |
| By: | Alain Cohn; Ernst Fehr; Lorenz Goette |
| Abstract: | The presence of workers who reciprocate higher wages with greater effort can have important consequences for labor markets. Knowledge about the determinants of reciprocal effort choices is, however, incomplete. We investigate the role of fairness perceptions and social preferences in workers’ performance in a field experiment in which workers were hired for a one-time job. We show that workers who perceive being underpaid at the base wage increase their performance if the hourly wage increases, while those who feel adequately paid or overpaid at the base wage do not change their performance. Moreover, we find that only workers who display positive reciprocity in a lab experiment show reciprocal performance responses in the field, while workers who lack positive reciprocity in the lab do not respond to the wage increase even if they feel underpaid at the base wage. Our findings suggest that fairness perceptions and social preferences are key in workers’ performance response to a wage increase. They are the first direct evidence of the fair-wage effort hypothesis in the field and also help interpret previous contradictory findings in the literature. |
| Keywords: | Fairness perception, positive reciprocity, field experiment, wage increase |
| JEL: | C93 J31 M52 |
| Date: | 2013–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:107&r=soc |
| By: | Li, Jing |
| Abstract: | Many studies have investigated the socioeconomic consequences of residential economic segregation in U.S. urban areas. These studies mainly focus on the impact of economic segregation on the poor or minorities and almost universally find that economic segregation hurts these groups in many ways. However, few studies investigate how economic segregation relates to the economic growth of an urban area as a whole. While there are papers that study this issue theoretically, empirical evidence is lacking. The motivation of this paper is to fill this gap. Using U.S. census data, this study documents a significant negative relationship between the initial levels of economic segregation in 1980 and the subsequent economic growth, indexed by metropolitan population growth, in 1980-2000 in U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Holding other things constant, MSAs having higher initial levels of economic segregation experienced substantially slower subsequent population growth. |
| Keywords: | economic segregation; human capital externalities; social interactions; urban growth |
| JEL: | D62 O40 R11 |
| Date: | 2012–12–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:41050&r=soc |