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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2020‒02‒17
eight papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Elisa Cavatorta (Department of Political Economy, King's College London, United Kingdom); Daniel John Zizzo (School of Economics, University of Queensland); Yousef Daoud (Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and Birzeit University) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how reciprocity is affected by exposure to political violence in early age. We combine a research design that isolates the exogenous exposure to violence with a lab-in-the-field experiment to study how reciprocity in the forms of conditional cooperation and vindictive behavior in adolescents varies as a result of exposure to violence. We focus on young Palestinians in the West Bank region of the Palestinian territories. We find that exposure to violence affects reciprocity of Palestinian adolescents: those more exposed to violence engage in more reciprocal behavior in both the domain of cooperation and that of aggression. Part of the effect is explained by changes in the beliefs about their peers' behavior. |
| Keywords: | reciprocity; cooperation; conflict; violence; Palestine. |
| JEL: | C72 C91 D91 I25 |
| Date: | 2020–01–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qld:uq2004:614&r=all |
| By: | Fochmann, Martin (Freie Universität Berlin and University of Cologne); Kocher, Martin G. (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, University of Vienna, and University of Gothenburg); Müller, Nadja (University of Cologne); Wolf, Nadja (University of Hannover) |
| Abstract: | Unethical behavior in organizations is usually associated with the risk of negative consequences for the organization and for the involved managers if being detected. The existing experimental literature in economics has so far mainly focused on the analysis of unethical behavior in environments that involve no fines or similar monetary consequences. In the current paper, we use a tax compliance framework to study (un-)ethical behavior of individuals and small groups. Our results show that groups are clearly less compliant than individuals. The risk of being detected is the most important aspect in the group communication process when deciding on compliance. |
| Keywords: | Dishonesty, lying, compliance, risk-taking, group decisions, communication, norms, experiment |
| JEL: | C91 C92 D03 H26 |
| Date: | 2019–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ihs:ihswps:8&r=all |
| By: | Clément Bosquet (Spatial Economic Research Center); Pierre-Philippe Combes (Département d'économie); Emeric Henry (Département d'économie); Thierry Mayer (Département d'économie) |
| Abstract: | Using an instrument based on a national contest in France determining researchers’ location, we find evidence of peer effects in academia, when focusing on precise groups of senders (producing the spillovers) and receivers (benefiting from the spillovers), defined based on field of specialisation, gender and age. These peer effects are shown to exist even outside formal co-authorship relationships. Furthermore, the match between the characteristics of senders and receivers plays a critical role. In particular, men benefit a lot from peer effects provided by men, while all other types of gender combinations produce spillovers twice as small. |
| Keywords: | Economics of Science; Peer Effects; Research Productivity; Gender Publication Gap |
| JEL: | I23 J16 J24 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/65v9ag2jfn865abjgaljmq2qi9&r=all |
| By: | Bernhard C. Dannemann (University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | In the research on peer effects, unweighted mean classroom performance is the predominant measure used in the estimation of education production functions. In this paper, based on the sociological concept of homophily, I introduce social network matrices that correspond to a weighting scheme for peers in the same class at school. Using spatial regression techniques, I confirm the presence of peer effects for the eighth grade population in the USA in the TIMSS 2015 student assessment. For students, the likelihood of cooperation increases conditionally on visible and non-visible characteristics, such as age, gender,migratory background, and attitudes towards scholastic achievement. This grouping behavior is found to affect the spillover effects of student variables, such as gender and language skills. The main findings are robust to various definitions of the social network matrix, as well as to the inclusion of teacher fixed effects. |
| Keywords: | Human Capital, Cognitive Skills, Peer Effects, Spatial Model, Class Heterogeneity, Education Production Function |
| Date: | 2020–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:old:dpaper:428&r=all |
| By: | Amirapu Amrit; Asadullah Niaz; Wahhaj Zaki |
| Abstract: | Traditional gender norms can restrict independent migration by women, preventing them from taking advantage of economic opportunities in urban non-agricultural industries. However, women may be able to circumvent such restrictions by using marriage to engage in long-distance migrationâ۠if they are wealthy enough to match with the desirable migrating grooms.Guided by a model in which women make marriage and migration decisions jointly, we hypothesize that marriage and labour markets will be inextricably linked by the possibility of marital migration. We use the construction of a major bridge in Bangladeshâ۠which dramatically reduced travel time between the economically deprived north-western region and the industrial belt around Dhakaâ۠as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in migration costs.In accordance with our model’s predictions, we find that the bridge construction induced marriage-related migration (not economic migration) among rural women, but only for those women coming from families above a poverty threshold. |
| Keywords: | Marriage markets,Migration,gender norms,Female labour force participation |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2019-92&r=all |
| By: | Angelova, Vera (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany); Güth, Werner (Max-Planck-Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, Germany); Kocher, Martin G. (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, University of Vienna, Austria and University of Gothenburg, Sweden) |
| Abstract: | We experimentally analyze leading by example in a public goods game with two permanent and two temporary group members. Our results show that leadership when permanent and temporary members interact leads to lower contributions than interaction without leadership. |
| Keywords: | Cooperation; leadership; social dilemma; public goods provision; experiment |
| JEL: | C91 D03 D64 |
| Date: | 2019–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ihs:ihswps:10&r=all |
| By: | Galor, Oded (Brown University); Özak, Ömer (Southern Methodist University); Sarid, Assaf (University of Haifa) |
| Abstract: | This research establishes the influence of linguistic traits on human behavior. Exploiting variations in the languages spoken by children of migrants with identical ancestral countries of origin, the analysis indicates that the presence of periphrastic future tense, and its association with long-term orientation has a significant positive impact on educational attainment, whereas the presence of sex-based grammatical gender, and its association with gender bias, has a significant adverse impact on female educational attainment. |
| Keywords: | human capital, long-term orientation, gender bias, periphrastic future tense, sex-based grammatical gender, culture, language |
| JEL: | D91 I25 J16 J24 Z10 Z13 |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12894&r=all |
| By: | María Laura Alzúa (CEDLAS-FCE-Universidad Nacional de la Plata – Conicet, La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina); Habiba Djebbari (Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, EHESS, Ecole Centrale, AMSE, Marseille, France.); Amy J. Pickering (Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, MA) |
| Abstract: | Basic sanitation facilities are still lacking in large parts of the developing world, engendering serious environmental health risks. Interventions commonly deliver in-kind or cash subsidies to promote private toilet ownership. In this paper, we assess an intervention that provides information and behavioral incentives to encourage villagers in rural Mali to build and use basic latrines. Using an experimental research design and carefully measured indicators of use, we find a sizeable impact from this intervention: latrine ownership and use almost doubled in intervention villages, and open defecation was reduced by half. Our results partially attribute these effects to increased knowledge about cheap and locally available sanitation solutions. They are also associated with shifts in the social norm governing sanitation. Taken together, our findings, unlike previous evidence from other contexts, suggest that a progressive approach that starts with ending open defecation and targets whole communities at a time can help meet the new Sustainable Development Goal of ending open defecation. |
| Keywords: | sanitation, behavioral change, community-based intervention, social norm |
| Date: | 2020–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1857&r=all |