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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2017‒04‒30
seven papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Sergei Guriev (Département d'économie); Nikita Melnikov (Higher School of Economics (HSE)) |
| Abstract: | We use weekly data from 79 Russian regions to measure the impact of economic shocks and proximity to war in Ukraine on social capital in Russian regions. We proxy social capital by the relative intensity of internet searches for the most salient dimensions of pro-social behavior such as "donate blood", "charity", "adopt a child" etc. This measure of social capital is correlated with a survey-based measure of generalized social trust. Our search-based measure of social capital responds negatively to the spikes of inflation and positively to the intensity of the conflict in Ukraine (controlling for region and week fixed effects). |
| JEL: | D72 D74 E31 P24 P25 P36 Z13 |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/4mupcmg7bt8iv8k3lhvbqr8p51&r=soc |
| By: | Oded Galor; Marc Klemp |
| Abstract: | Exploiting a novel geo-referenced data set of population diversity across ethnic groups, this research advances the hypothesis and empirically establishes that variation in population diversity across human societies, as determined in the course of the exodus of human from Africa tens of thousands of years ago, contributed to the differential formation of pre-colonial autocratic institutions within ethnic groups and the emergence of autocratic institutions across countries. Diversity has amplified the importance of institutions in mitigating the adverse effects of non-cohesiveness on productivity, while contributing to the scope for domination, leading to the formation of institutions of the autocratic type. |
| JEL: | O10 O43 Z1 |
| Date: | 2017–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23301&r=soc |
| By: | Coscia, Michelle (Harvard University and University of Namur); Cheston, Timothy (Harvard University); Hausmann, Ricardo (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | Are regions poor because they have bad institutions or are they poor because they are disconnected from the social channels through which technology diffuses? This paper tests institutional and technological theories of economic convergence by looking at income convergence across Colombian municipalities. We use formal employment and wage data to estimate growth of income per capita at the municipal level. In Colombia, municipalities are organized into 32 departamentos or states. We use cellphone metadata to cluster municipalities into 32 communication clusters, defined as a set of municipalities that are densely connected through phone calls. We show that these two forms of grouping municipalities are very different. We study the effect on municipal income growth of the characteristics of both the state and the communication cluster to which the municipality belongs. We find that belonging to a richer communication cluster accelerates convergence, while belonging to a richer state does not. This result is robust to controlling for state fixed effects when studying the impact of communication clusters and vice versa. The results point to the importance of social interactions rather than formal institutions in the growth process. |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp17-014&r=soc |
| By: | Emeric Henry (Département d'économie); Charles Louis-Sidois (Département d'économie) |
| Abstract: | Members of groups and organizations often have to decide on rules that regulate their contributions to common tasks. They typically differ in their propensity to contribute and often care about the image they project, in particular want to be perceived by other group members as being high contributors. In such environments we study the interaction between the way members vote on rules and their subsequent contribution decisions. We show that multiple norms can emerge. We draw surprising policy implications, on the effect of group size, of supermajority rules and of the observability of actions. |
| Date: | 2015–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/4g5hemr5o18g7os4h53mulpcam&r=soc |
| By: | Ispano, Alessandro (THEMA - Universite de Cergy-Pontoise); Schwardmann, Peter (University of Munich) |
| Abstract: | Evidence from studies in international relations, the politics of reform, collective action and price competition suggests that economic agents in social dilemma situations cooperate more to avoid losses than in the pursuit of gains. To test whether the prospect of losses can induce cooperation, we let experimental subjects play the travelers dilemma in the gain and loss domain. Subjects cooperate substantially more over losses. Furthermore, our results suggest that this treatment effect is best explained by reference-dependent risk preferences and reference-dependent strategic sophistication. We discuss the implications of our results and relate our findings to other experimental games played in the loss domain. |
| Keywords: | Travelers dilemma; loss domain; diminishing sensitivity; strategic sophistication; |
| JEL: | C90 D01 D03 D81 |
| Date: | 2017–03–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:23&r=soc |
| By: | Quoc-Anh Do (Département d'économie); Kieu-Trang Nguyen (London School of Economics and Political Science); Anh N. Tran (Indiana University) |
| Abstract: | We study patronage politics in authoritarian Vietnam, using an exhaustive panel of ranking officials from 2000 to 2010 to estimate their promotions’ impact on infrastructure in their hometowns of patrilineal ancestry. Native officials’ promotions lead to a broad range of hometown infrastructure improvement. Hometown favoritism is pervasive across all ranks, even among officials without budget authority, except among elected legislators. Favors are narrowly targeted towards small communes that have no political power, and are strengthened with bad local governance and strong local family values. The evidence suggests a likely motive of social preferences for hometown. |
| Keywords: | Favoritism; Patronage; Authoritarian regime; Political connection; Hometown; Infrastructure; Distributive politics |
| JEL: | O12 D72 H72 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/2q4cjijvsm84gqlqqo55bjuhog&r=soc |
| By: | Ulrike Unterhofer; Katharina Wrohlich |
| Abstract: | Social norms and attitudes towards gender roles have been shown to have a large effect on economic outcomes of men and women. Many countries have introduced policies that aim at changing gender stereotypes, for example fathers’ quota in parental leave schemes. In this paper, we analyze whether the introduction of the fathers’ quota in Germany in 2007, that caused a sharp increase in the take-up of parental leave by fathers, has changed the attitudes towards gender roles in the grandparents’ generation. To this end, we exploit the quasi-experimental setting of the 2007 reform and compare grandparents whose son had a child born before the 2007 reform to grandparents whose son had a child born after it. Our results suggest that such policy programs not only induce direct behavioral responses by the target group but also have indirect effects on non-treated individuals through social interaction and can thus change attitudes towards gender roles in a society as a whole. |
| Keywords: | Parental leave, gender equality, social norms, social interaction, policy evaluation |
| JEL: | J16 J18 J22 H31 D13 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1657&r=soc |