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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
| By: | Freire, Tiago; Li, Xiaoye |
| Abstract: | Putnam (1995)'s seminal work was one of the first to describe the decline of social capital in the US after the 1960s, a period that saw a large increase in the flow of immigrants into the US. Using the Volunteer Supplement of the September Sample of the Current Population Survey (CPS) between 2004 and 2011, we examine the relationship between immigration and social capital in the US, measured by membership of organizations, volunteering and hours volunteered. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to address this question. Once we correct for immigrants' self-selection to different destinations using a supply-push instrumental variable, we find that a one standard deviation increase in the number of immigrants decreases volunteering by 0.08 to 0.12 standard deviations, or that the 8.7 million legal immigrants who entered the US between 2005 and 2011 reduced the probability Americans volunteered between 27.8% and 35.7%. From our robustness checks we argue that the reduction in volunteering by natives is driven by the the fact that new immigrants have a lower social capital, reducing the benefits of volunteering. Our results have important implications for public policy. We show that migrants' social capital has an impact on receiving communities. Therefore immigrants' social capital (such as having relatives living at the receiving community) should be taken into consideration. Future research should focus on what is the optimal weight to give to the presence of family members versus, for instance, educational level of the immigrants. |
| Keywords: | Migration; Social Capital; Volunteer; Race |
| JEL: | J61 J79 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–02–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:44540&r=soc |
| By: | Yamamura, Eiji |
| Abstract: | The Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake hit Japan in 1995, causing devastating damage to the economic landscape of southern-central Japan. However, the earthquake also caused people to realize the importance of social capital in Japan. Based on a large, individual-level database comprising 488,223 observations, this study investigates how and the extent to which the earthquake enhanced the investment in social capital through participation in community activity. The differences-in-differences method was used, and the following key findings were obtained: (1) In Japan, people were more likely to invest in social capital in 1996 than in 1991, (2) the effects of the earthquake decreased as the distance of one’s place of residence increased from Kobe, and (3) he earthquake significantly increased the social capital investment rate of Kobe residents, whereas it had no significant influence on the investment rate of residents of large cities close to Kobe. |
| Keywords: | Natural disasters, social capital, volunteer activities |
| JEL: | N35 Q54 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–02–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:44493&r=soc |
| By: | Hassani Mahmooei, Behrooz; Parris, Brett |
| Abstract: | Trust is a dynamic and complex phenomenon and understanding the factors which affect its formation, evolution and disappearance is a critical research issue. It has been shown that trust plays a key role in how human and social capital develop, how economies grow and how societies progress. In this paper, we present an agent-based model of the relations between a dynamic effort allocation system, an evolving trust framework and a reputation module to study how changes in micro-level rent-seeking traits and decisions can shape the emergence of trust across the simulated environment. According to our results, variations in trust are correlated more with the returns to being productive, rather than rent-seeking. In line with previous studies, our model shows that higher than average levels of risk-taking by agents lead to further trust and gains during an interaction, though taken to an extreme, both trust and gain can decline as a result of reckless decisions. We also report on the formation of trust clusters in our model as an emergent phenomenon. |
| Keywords: | Trust, Rent-seeking, Agent-based Model, Reputation, Effort Allocation, Social Simulation |
| JEL: | C61 C63 D72 |
| Date: | 2012–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:44919&r=soc |
| By: | Donze, Jocelyn; Gunnes, Trude |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how a firm fosters formal and informal interactions among its employees to create a collective identity and positively influence effort. We develop a model where employees have both a personal and a social ideal for effort, and where the firm can make its workforce more sensitive to this social ideal by allocating part of the work time to social interactions. We show that by investing in social capital, the firm can increase the power of peer pressure, make screening among heterogeneous employees less costly and, finally, augment the effectiveness of monetary incentives. |
| Keywords: | monetary and non monetary incentives, social norms, norm regulation, identity |
| JEL: | D03 D21 D86 J33 M5 |
| Date: | 2013–03–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:44769&r=soc |
| By: | Christophe Muller (AMSE - Aix-Marseille School of Economics - Aix-Marseille Univ. - Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - Ecole Centrale Marseille (ECM)); Marc Vothknecht (DIW Berlin - German Institute for Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of violent conflict on social capital, as measured by citizen participation in community groups, defined by four activity types: governance, social service, infrastructure development and risk-sharing. Combining household panel data from Indonesia with conflict event information, we find an overall decrease in citizen contributions in districts affected by group violence in the early post-Suharto transition period. However, participation in communities with a high degree of ethnic polarization is less affected, and is even stimulated for local governance and risk-sharing activities. Moreover, individual engagement appears to depend on the involvement of other members from the same ethnic group, which points toward building of intra-ethnic social networks in the presence of violence. Finally, our results show the danger of generalization when dealing with citizen participation in community activities. We find a large variety of responses depending on the activity and its economic and social functions. We also find large observed and unobserved individual heterogeneities of the effect of violence on participation. Once an appropriate nomenclature of activities is used and controls for heterogeneity are applied, we find that the ethnic and social configuration of society is central in understanding citizen participation. |
| Keywords: | Violent Conflict; Citizen Participation; Local Public Goods |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00796194&r=soc |
| By: | Centorrino, Samuele; Concina, Laura |
| Abstract: | We show that introducing a competitive preliminary stage in a sequential public good game helps select one of the more cooperative leaders in the group. Using a modified second price auction, we find that bids have a strong positive predictive power on individual contributions. Moreover, evidence is provided that trust can explain voluntary and cooperative leadership. However, followers reaction to voluntary leaders may rise free riding behaviour, with uncertain effect on total public good provision. |
| Keywords: | Public good experiment Leadership Self-selection Cooperation Trust Public good provision. |
| JEL: | A13 C72 C92 H41 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:26933&r=soc |
| By: | Youyou BAENDE BOFOTA (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)) |
| Abstract: | This paper presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between social capital and children’ educational outcomes in Tanzania, using panel data from the Kagera Health and Development Survey (KHDS). By exploiting the panel structure of the data, we use several econometric techniques - fixed effect, first difference and 2SLS - to address social capital endogeneity issue and omitted variable bias. We find evidence that social capital available in the family affects significantly student attainment and that the magnitudes are large enough to explain a substantial proportion of variation in children schooling in Tanzania in the short term. More importantly, this positive impact lasts over the long term. |
| Keywords: | Social capital, Education, Developing countries, Tanzania |
| Date: | 2013–02–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvir:2013003&r=soc |
| By: | Chen, Shu-Heng; Gostoli, Umberto |
| Abstract: | In this paper, the authors continue the pursuit of the self-coordination mechanism as studied in the El Farol Bar problem. However, in addition to efficiency (the optimal use of the public facility), they are also interested in the distribution of the public resources among all agents. Hence, they introduce a two-dimensional El Farol Bar problem, to be distinguished from the early one-dimensional one, which has efficiency as the only concern. The authors ask whether it is possible to have self-coordinating solutions to the El Farol Bar problem so that the public resources can be optimally used with neither idle capacity nor incurring congestion and, in the meantime, the resources can be well distributed among all agents. They consider this ideal situation an El Farol version of a good society. This paper shows the existence of a positive answer to this inquiry, but it requires two elements, which were largely left out in the conventional literature on the El Farol Bar problem. These elements are social networks and social preferences. The authors first show, through cellular automata, that social networks can contribute to the emergence of a good society. They then show that the addition of some inequity-averse agents can even guarantee the emergence of the good society. -- |
| Keywords: | El Farol Bar problem,social preferences,social networks,inequity aversion,cellular automata |
| JEL: | B52 C63 C73 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201320&r=soc |
| By: | Abel Brodeur (PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - CNRS : UMR8545 - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - Ecole des Ponts ParisTech - Ecole normale supérieure de Paris - ENS Paris - Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA), EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris); Sarah Flèche (PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - CNRS : UMR8545 - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - Ecole des Ponts ParisTech - Ecole normale supérieure de Paris - ENS Paris - Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA), EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses how neighbors' income affect agents' well-being using unprecedented data from the BRFSS and the City of Somerville. We conduct a multi-scale approach at the county, ZIP code and street-levels and find that the association between well-being and neighbors' income follows an inverted U-shaped pattern in the size of the area. We find a negative relationship between well-being and neighbors' income in the county of residence, but the opposite at the ZIP code-level. Our results are consistent with the fact that agents enjoy living in a rich ZIP code but also having poor faraway neighbors since they have preferences for high social status. We test explicitly this interpretation by including amenities and the relative rank in the local income distribution in our model. At the street-level, we find a negative association between neighbors' income and self-reported well-being indicating the presence of income comparisons between very close neighbors. |
| Keywords: | Income comparisons ; Rank ; Relative utility ; Social interactions ; Social staut ; Well-being |
| Date: | 2013–02–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-00795198&r=soc |
| By: | Shoji, Masahiro |
| Abstract: | I conducted an artefactual field experiment to identify whether guilt reduces crime, and how the crime reduction effects of guilt change due to peer effects. Guilt aversion predicts the occurrence of peer effects caused by changes in guilt sensitivity and belief. I found supporting evidence of changes in belief. My experiment is novel in that it develops an approach to elicit guilt sensitivity. Using this data, I show behavioural patterns consistent with guilt aversion but not with pure altruism or trustworthiness. The external validity of guilt sensitivity is also shown. |
| Keywords: | Guilt aversion; crime; experiment; external validity; peer effects; broken windows theory |
| JEL: | C91 C93 D63 K42 |
| Date: | 2013–03–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:44746&r=soc |
| By: | Migheli Matteo; Ramello, Giovanni B. |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to shed light on scholarly communication and its current trajectories by examining academics’ perception of Open Access, while also providing a reference case for studying social norm change. In this respect, the issue of publication choice and the role of Open Access journals casts light on the changes affecting the scientific community and its institutional arrangements for validating and circulating new research. The empirical investigation conducted also offers a useful vantage point for gauging the importance of localised social norms in guiding and constraining behaviour. |
| Keywords: | Open Access, Scholarly Publication, Social Norms, Academics' Behavior, Economics of Science |
| JEL: | K19 Z13 O33 L17 |
| Date: | 2013–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uca:ucaiel:13&r=soc |