nep-soc New Economics Papers
on Social Norms and Social Capital
Issue of 2013‒05‒24
five papers chosen by
Fabio Sabatini
Universita' la Sapienza

  1. Protests and Beliefs in Social Coordination in Africa By Marc Sangnier; Yanos Zylberberg
  2. Social trust and use of banking services across households in 28 transitional countries By Afandi, Elvin; Habibov, Nazim
  3. Incomplete Information Models of Guilt Aversion in the Trust Game By Giuseppe Attanasi; Pierpaolo Battigalli; Elena Manzoni
  4. Young adults living with their parents and the influence of peers By Effrosyni Adamopoulou; Ezgi Kaya
  5. Education, race and revealed attitudes towards homosexual couples By Leguizamon, Sebastian; Leguizamon, Susane; Christafore, David

  1. By: Marc Sangnier (AMSE - Aix-Marseille School of Economics - Aix-Marseille Univ. - Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) - École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales [EHESS] - Ecole Centrale Marseille (ECM)); Yanos Zylberberg (CREI - Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional - Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
    Abstract: Leaders' misbehaviors may durably undermine the credibility of the state. Using individual level survey in the aftermath of geo-localized social protests in Africa, we find that trust in monitoring institutions and beliefs in social coordination strongly evolve after riots, together with trust in leaders. As no signs of social unrest can be recorded before, the social conflict can be interpreted as a sudden signal sent on a leader's action from which citizens extract information on the country's institutions. Our interpretation is the following. Agents lend their taxes to a leader with imperfect information on the leader's type and the underlying capacity of institutions to monitor her. A misbehavior is then interpreted as a failure of institutions to secure taxes given by citizens and makes agents (i) reluctant to contribute to the state effort, (ii) skeptical about the contributions of others.
    Keywords: social conflicts; norms of cooperation; trust; institutions
    Date: 2013–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00822377&r=soc
  2. By: Afandi, Elvin; Habibov, Nazim
    Abstract: In this paper, we use survey data from a sample of 29,000 households from 28 transitional countries and Turkey to address two main questions: (i) is there any effect of social trust on the use of banking services and (ii) what are the household-level and country-specific determinants of using banking services in transitional countries. We found that the higher level of trust in people predicts a greater level in use of banking services by households regardless of the model specifications and econometric adjustments employed. This association appears to be more prominent among less educated respondents and in countries with low levels of legal enforcement. The results also suggest that location, income and wealth of households, along with country income level, legal enforcement and inflation rates strongly affect the decisions made by households regarding their use of banking services. In contrast, we found either a very small or non-significant impact with regard to bank ownership structure on the use of banking services across households.
    Keywords: use of banking services, social trust, transitional countries
    JEL: G21 O16 P20
    Date: 2012–08–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:46997&r=soc
  3. By: Giuseppe Attanasi; Pierpaolo Battigalli; Elena Manzoni
    Abstract: In the theory of psychological games it is assumed that players' preferences on material consequences depend on endogenous beliefs. Most of the applications of this theoretical framework assume that the psychological utility functions representing such preferences are common knowledge. But this is often unrealistic. In particular, it cannot be true in experimental games where players are subjects drawn at random from a population. Therefore an incomplete-information methodology is called for. We take a first step in this direction, focusing on models of guilt aversion in the Trust Game. We consider two alternative modeling assumptions: (i) guilt aversion depends on the role played in the game, because only the "trustee" can feel guilt for letting the co-player down, (ii) guilt aversion is independent of the role played in the game. We show how the set of Bayesian equilibria changes as the upper bound on guilt sensitivity varies, and we compare this with the complete-information case. Our analysis illustrates the incomplete-information approach to psychological games and can help organize experimental results in the Trust Game. JEL classification: C72, C91, D03. Keywords: Psychological games, Trust Game, guilt, incomplete information.
    Date: 2013
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:igi:igierp:480&r=soc
  4. By: Effrosyni Adamopoulou; Ezgi Kaya
    Abstract: This paper focuses on young adults living with their parents in the U.S. and studies the role of peers. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health)we analize the influence of high school friends on the coresidence of young adults with their parents. We address the challenges in the identification of peer effects in a static framework and employ an instrumental variable technique and control for state fixed effects in order to mitigate them. We then move to a dynamic framework and exploit differences in the timing of leaving the parental home among peers. Our results indicate that there are statistically significant peer effects on the nest-leaving behavior of young adults.
    Keywords: Peer effects, Friends, Living arrangements, Leaving parental home
    JEL: D1 J1 J6 Z13
    Date: 2013–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cte:werepe:we1310&r=soc
  5. By: Leguizamon, Sebastian; Leguizamon, Susane; Christafore, David
    Abstract: We examine the varying influence of the presence of homosexual couples on average home prices with different compositions of educational attainment and race. We find that a higher number of homosexuals in relatively higher educated areas is associated with higher average prices and lower average prices in areas with less educated residents. The magnitude of positive influence and negative influence is lower when the number of black residents increases. This suggests that education is associated with a greater revealed tolerance for homosexuals, but the influence of education is less for areas with a higher percent black, perhaps due to homophily.
    Keywords: Sexual Orientation; Homophily; Race; Education; Prejudice
    JEL: J15 R21
    Date: 2013–05–17
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:47068&r=soc

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