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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2017‒08‒13
nine papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Giuliano, Paola (University of California, Los Angeles); Nunn, Nathan (Harvard University) |
| Abstract: | When does culture persist and when does it change? We examine a determinant that has been put forth in the anthropology literature: the variability of the environment from one generation to the next. A prediction, which emerges from a class of existing models from evolutionary anthropology, is that following the customs of the previous generation is relatively more beneficial in stable environments where the culture that has evolved up to the previous generation is more likely to be relevant for the subsequent generation. We test this hypothesis by measuring the variability of average temperature across 20-year generations from 500–1900. Looking across countries, ethnic groups, and the descendants of immigrants, we find that populations with ancestors who lived in environments with more stability from one generation to the next place a greater importance in maintaining tradition today. These populations also exhibit more persistence in their traditions over time. |
| Keywords: | cultural persistence, cultural change, tradition |
| JEL: | N10 Q54 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10930&r=soc |
| By: | Daron Acemoglu; James A. Robinson |
| Abstract: | Societies under similar geographic and economic conditions and subject to similar external influences nonetheless develop very different types of states. At one extreme are weak states with little capacity and ability to regulate economic or social relations. At the other are despotic states which dominate civil society. Yet there are others which are locked into an ongoing competition with civil society and it is these, not the despotic ones, that develop the greatest capacity. We develop a dynamic contest model of the potential competition between state (controlled by a ruler or a group of elites) and civil society (representing non-elite citizens), where both players can invest to increase their power. The model leads to different types of steady states depending on initial conditions. One type of steady state, corresponding to a weak state, emerges when civil society is strong relative to the state (e.g., having developed social norms limiting political hierarchy). Another type of steady state, corresponding to a despotic state, originates from initial conditions where the state is powerful and civil society is weak. A third type of steady state, which we refer to as an inclusive state, emerges when state and civil society are more evenly matched. In this case, each party has greater incentives to invest to keep up with the other, and this leads to the most powerful and capable type of state, while simultaneously incentivizing civil society to be equally powerful as well. Our framework highlights that comparative statics with respect to structural factors such as geography, economic conditions or external threats, are conditional — in the sense that depending on initial conditions they can shift a society into or out of the basin of attraction of the inclusive state. |
| JEL: | H4 H7 P16 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23657&r=soc |
| By: | Braeseman, Fabian; Stephany, Fabian |
| Abstract: | Aiming to explain the European divide with respect to social and political values, scholars in the past have relied on a simplified four- (or even two-) dimensional regime model which tranches the continent according to the social capacities of its inhabitants. This „cartography“ of „Social Europe“ proves to be outdated by the presented findings. In this work, we apply a factor analysis model to the most commonly used approximations of social capital on the European Social Survey. The analysis shows that three distinct dimensions of social capital measures are important in Europe: additionally to generalised social capital, which is usually approximated by generalised trust, there is one dimension of civic engagement and one of communitarian values. This distinction leads to a new social landscape of Europe, which highlights the relevance of considering regional and cross-border clusters in all relevant social capital dimensions. A hierarchical multi-level model that controls for individual and regional characteristics emphasises the importance of the spatial clustering in Europe with respect to social capital. In addition, we explore, as a novelty in social capital literature, a classification tree to model generalized trust. The results of the non-parametric model reveal that Protestantism and education are good benchmarks to classify trust on an individual level. Based on these findings we argue for the necessity of policies with a regional focus that take the different sub-national structures of social capacity in Europe into account. |
| Keywords: | classification trees,factor analysis,social capital,multi-level modeling |
| JEL: | C33 C38 D70 Z13 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:agawps:07&r=soc |
| By: | Giampaolo Lecce (Bocconi University - Department of Economics); Laura Ogliari (Bocconi University); Tommaso Orlando (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | We study how cultural distance affects the rejection of imposed institutions. To this purpose, we exploit the transplantation of Piedmontese institutions on Southern Italy which occurred during the Italian unification. We assemble a novel and unique dataset containing information on episodes of brigandage, a form of violent uprising against the unitary government, at the municipal level. We use geographic distance from local settlements of Piedmontese descent as a proxy for cultural distance between each municipality and the new rulers. We find robust evidence that cultural distance from the origins of the transplanted institutions is significantly associated with more intense resistance to these institutions. Our results further suggest that the rejection of the transplanted institutions may have a long lasting effect on political participation. |
| Keywords: | Institutions, Institutional Transplantations, Culture, Social Unrest, Electoral Turnout |
| JEL: | N43 D74 P16 Z10 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2097&r=soc |
| By: | Gaudeul, Alexia; Kaczmarek, Magdalena C. |
| Abstract: | Recent evidence suggests that nudges, i.e. alterations in the decisional context, can have large effects on decisions and can improve individual and public welfare. This paper presents the results of a controlled experiment that was designed to evaluate not only the effectiveness of a default manipulation on decision making in a charity giving context, but also whether yielding or opposing a nudge affects attitudes, and whether nudging intentions (pledges) translate into behaviour (donations). The results show that while making pledges the default increased pledges, it did not increase donations because the nudge affected only participants who were close to indifference between pledging and not pledging and were thus unlikely to actually do the effort of translating their pledges into donations. Participants who were nudged to pledge pledged more often than participants who were nudged to keep, but they were less likely to maintain their participation in the experiment, and those who kept participating were less likely to pledge again. This, along with high attrition among nudged pledgers explains why nudging pledges did not result in higher actual donations. We interpret our findings in terms of a selection effect of nudges, and discuss practical implications of our experiment in terms of the applicability of default-based nudges as a tool for policy interventions. |
| Keywords: | attitudes,decision making,charity giving,defaults,intentions,nudges,pro-social behaviour,selection effect |
| JEL: | C9 D04 D10 D64 H41 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cegedp:318&r=soc |
| By: | Giuliano, Paola (University of California, Los Angeles) |
| Abstract: | Social attitudes toward women vary significantly across societies. This chapter reviews recent empirical research on various historical determinants of contemporary differences in gender roles and gender gaps across societies, and how these differences are transmitted from parents to children and therefore persist until today. We review work on the historical origin of differences in female labor-force participation, fertility, education, marriage arrangements, competitive attitudes, domestic violence, and other forms of difference in gender norms. Most of the research illustrates that differences in cultural norms regarding gender roles emerge in response to specific historical situations, but tend to persist even after the historical conditions have changed. We also discuss the conditions under which gender norms either tend to be stable or change more quickly. |
| Keywords: | gender, cultural transmission, historical persistence |
| JEL: | N0 Z1 J16 |
| Date: | 2017–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10931&r=soc |
| By: | S. Franceschini; G. Marletto |
| Abstract: | The mutual impacts between public participation and social capital has been thoroughly investigated, but little is known about the dynamics of social capital during a participative process. To fill such a gap, an ad-hoc monitoring system of social capital was implemented along an actual participative procedure about the future of an University site. Results show that - i) social capital evolution can follow non-monotonic patterns; ii) different dynamics of social interaction may occur that impact the quality of participation; iii) different participatory tools may lead to different dynamics of social capital; iv) repeated measurements of social capital generate a memory effect which reduces the variation of social capital itself. We also describe relevant drawbacks (resource consuming activities, reduced number of participants, etc.) which may reduce the applicability of the proposed approach. We conclude discussing when an on-going monitoring process is worth to be implemented, and we also describe some relevant side results for those interested to the issue of public participation - i) the announcement of the procedure already generated relevant individual learning; ii) the individual interviews were recognized as an essential learning moment, so we suggest including them into the design of any participative process. |
| Keywords: | social capital;participative process;mixed-method research;learning;university |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cns:cnscwp:201706&r=soc |
| By: | Sanchez Villalba, Miguel; Martinez Gorricho, Silvia |
| Abstract: | We study how voluntary participation in Beauty Contest Games (BCGs) affects the actions and payoffs of type-heterogenous players. In a BCG, players have two goals --one personal, the other social-- and so BCGs appropriately model relevant economic situations like participating in a social network, partaking in the coding of an open-source software, or the choice of research topics by academics, among others. Key in these and other cases is the concept of "social norm" that will emerge in the associated "community", and so people's entry choices will depend crucially on their expectations regarding not only how many but who (which types) will join in. We find that in equilibrium there is entry as long as the BCG is "attractive" and that there might be multiple equilibria, each indexed by its associated social norm. We also find that, when finite, there is an odd number of equilibria and that --if ordered based on the value of the associated social norm-- odd/even equilibria are stable/unstable. Further, for low attractiveness, equilibrium social norms are univocally associated with the extrema of the distribution of types in the economy, so that stable/unstable equilibria are linked to maxima/interior minima. We find that "universal" communities in which everybody joins the BCG (as implicitly assumed by the literature) only occur when the BCG is sufficiently attractive and the economy's average type is not extreme. In non-universal communities, social norms are affected by the attractiveness of the BCG and the functional form of the distribution of types in the economy (especifically, its skewness around extrema). Attractiveness affects both the size and the composition of the community. Thus, an increase in attractiveness could lead both to the entry of new members and to the exit of some others. |
| Keywords: | Beauty contest game, endogenous entry, social norms |
| JEL: | C7 L17 Z1 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80515&r=soc |
| By: | Robert MacCulloch (University of Auckland) |
| Abstract: | This chapter focusses on the question of how formal institutions, like those governing the level of freedom, the regulatory state, political parties and the generosity of the welfare state, affect self-reported well-being. The evidence suggests, for example, that more freedom, as well as government structures which encourage civic engagement, participation and trust, have positive effects. Many studies, however, use cross-sectional data with small sample sizes, often due to institutions being measured at the country level with limited variation over time. As a consequence, further work is needed to test robustness. Stronger results hold with respect to particular types of welfare state institutions, like unemployment benefits, which are subject to quite frequent changes within nations. Increases in unemployment benefits are associated with higher levels of well-being for all workers, probably due to greater income security. However, doubt still persists as to their overall impact, due to the extent to which well-being is adversely affected by the higher taxes needed to support a more generous welfare state. |
| Keywords: | Wellbeing, government structures, welfare state, unemployment benefits |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mtu:wpaper:17_14&r=soc |