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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2025–10–13
seven papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Alexsandros Cavgias (University of Ghent); Cristian Navarro (CEMFI, Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first causal test of the widely debated hypothesis that British colonial institutions promoted sexual prejudice—defined as negative attitudes toward sexual minorities—in postcolonial societies. We document five main findings. First, after accounting for differences in contemporary economic development, OLS estimates from a cross-country sample of former European colonies reveal that former British colonies exhibit higher sexual prejudice than those of other European powers. Second, Geo-RDD estimates show that former British colonies have significantly greater sexual prejudice than former Portuguese colonies in Southern and Eastern Africa, where local norms did not systematically condemn same-sex relations. Third, Geo-RDD estimates indicate that former British and French colonies display similar levels of sexual prejudice in Western Africa, where a higher share of the population adheres to religious norms condemning same-sex acts. Fourth, additional evidence from areas in South America and Southeast Asia not characterized by homophobic social norms before colonization reinforces the external validity of our findings from Southeastern Africa. Finally, mechanisms analysis suggests that the persistence of sodomy laws fully accounts for the negative association between British colonial origin and contemporary sexual prejudice across countries. Overall, our results indicate that British colonial origin notably increased sexual prejudice in societies with social norms different from the penal codes imposed by colonizers. |
| Keywords: | Sexual prejudice, British colonization, colonial institutions, sodomy laws. |
| JEL: | J15 J16 O10 O43 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cmf:wpaper:wp2025_2514 |
| By: | Luca Lazzaro; Manuel S. Mariani; Ren\'e Algesheimer; Radu Tanase |
| Abstract: | Faced with uncertainty in decision making, individuals often turn to their social networks to inform their decisions. In consequence, these networks become central to how new products and behaviors spread. A key structural feature of networks is the presence of long ties, which connect individuals who share few mutual contacts. Under what conditions do long ties facilitate or hinder diffusion? The literature provides conflicting results, largely due to differing assumptions about individual decision-making. We reinvestigate the role of long ties by experimentally measuring adoption decisions under social influence for products with uncertain payoffs and embedding these decisions in network simulations. At the individual level, we find that higher payoff uncertainty increases the average reliance on social influence. However, personal traits such as risk preferences and attitudes toward uncertainty lead to substantial heterogeneity in how individuals respond to social influence. At the collective level, the observed individual heterogeneity ensures that long ties consistently promote diffusion, but their positive effect weakens as uncertainty increases. Our results reveal that the effect of long ties is not determined by whether the aggregate process is a simple or complex contagion, but by the extent of heterogeneity in how individuals respond to social influence. |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2510.04785 |
| By: | Tang, William (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether a native’s local exposure to immigration affects their generalised trust, in the context of Germany during the 2014-16 European Refugee Crisis. While the literature has extensively studied the impacts of immigration and the determinants of trust separately, scant empirical work has sought to causally link the two ; this is despite the existence of several plausible theoretical mechanisms. Exploiting the quasi-random allocation of refugees across Germany’s federal states, I employ two identification strategies : a Two-Way Fixed Effects model and a Difference-in-Differences model – the latter being my preferred approach, as it more effectively leverages the exogenous variation induced by the European Refugee Crisis. Across both models, I find no evidence of a causal effect of immigration exposure on trust. This result holds over a battery of robustness checks, including heterogeneity analysis, dynamic treatment effect specifications, and alternative scalings/measures of generalised trust. In doing so, I offer one of the first empirical attempts to causally bridge two previously separate literatures, and suggest that generalised trust may be less relevant than other social/cultural outcomes (e.g. political attitudes or crime perception) when designing immigration related policies. |
| Keywords: | immigration ; generalised trust ; European Refugee Crisis ; Germany ; social cohesion JEL classifications: J15 ; O15 ; J61 ; O10 ; Z13 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:wrkesp:90 |
| By: | Hwang, Joon; Alam, Nurul; Shenk, Mary K (The Pennsylvania State University) |
| Abstract: | Throughout human evolutionary history, individuals have faced two fundamental challenges under uncertainty: deciding whether to take risks and managing risks through cooperation. While both risk-taking and social risk management have been widely studied, less attention has been given to how these two processes are linked—specifically, how risk-taking itself may be shaped by social networks. We test the "social capital buffer" hypothesis, which posits that greater social connectedness promotes risk-taking by buffering against negative outcomes. Analyzing social networks and risk preferences among 140 individuals in rural Bangladesh whose livelihoods range from farming to wage labor and small-scale trade, we identify distinct pathways through which social capital influences risk preference. Highly clustered individuals in financial support networks exhibit greater risk preference, suggesting that clustering facilitates risk-taking by ensuring resource circulation within a tight-knit group. In contrast, individuals with more support-receiving ties in material support networks are more risk-averse, indicating that material support functions as informal social insurance reducing reliance on risky decisions. Finally, reciprocity in material support networks promotes risk-taking only among wealthier individuals, highlighting how individual economic resources interact with social capital to shape risk-taking. These findings reveal that social capital does not uniformly promote or constrain risk-taking but serves distinct adaptive functions based on network structure, economic conditions, and resource types, balancing risk-taking and risk-avoidance to help individuals successfully navigate uncertainty. |
| Date: | 2025–09–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:bxt8g_v1 |
| By: | Carola Binder; Cody Couture; Abhiprerna Smit |
| Abstract: | This paper examines partisanship in public perceptions of the Federal Reserve. In all years from 2001 through 2023, trust in the Federal Reserve was highest for respondents of the same party as the President. The partisan effects were larger than other demographic differences in trust, but do not explain the large partisan gap in inflation expectations in those years. We conducted a new survey-based information experiment before and after the Presidential inauguration in 2025, and found a changed pattern: Republicans continued to have lower trust in the Fed than did Democrats, even after a Republican President was elected and took office. Yet, Republicans had much lower inflation expectations than Democrats. Responses to open-ended survey questions point to tariffs and President Trump himself as most salient to consumers when considering how inflation will evolve. |
| Keywords: | Federal Reserve; trust; partisanship; inflation expectations |
| JEL: | E02 E03 E30 E5 E51 E58 |
| Date: | 2025–04–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwm:wpaper:172 |
| By: | Jerg Gutmann; Anna Lewczuk-Czerwińska; Jacek Lewkowicz; Stefan Voigt |
| Abstract: | Constitutions as the formal foundation of a country’s legal and political system have important economic and political effects. Yet, we still know little about why constitutions set effective constraints on politicians in some societies, while being largely disregarded in others. Here, we ask if national culture matters for constitutional compliance. We study a cross-section of 115 countries, making use of novel indicators of constitutional compliance. We find that societies with a more individualistic population exhibit higher levels of compliance. These results are robust and extend to instrumental variable estimations. They imply a novel transmission channel from cultural traits to long-term economic development: individualistic national culture increases the credibility of constitutional self-commitments. Our analysis also supports the more general idea that the effects of formal institutions depend on the informal institutional environment in which they are embedded. Regarding religion, our results are consistent with past research that attributes the lack of development in the modern Muslim world to deficient institutional quality. |
| Keywords: | constitutional compliance, culture, individualism, Islam, long-term orientation, moral universalism, power distance, rule of law |
| JEL: | H11 K1 K42 P48 Z10 Z12 Z18 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12182 |
| By: | Sinanoglu, Semuhi |
| Abstract: | How does international assistance impact public attitudes towards donors in the recipient country when tied to strategic interests? European leaders increasingly highlight the strategic and transactional nature of international assistance. Yet, we still do not know much about how such shifts in the framing of international assistance are perceived by the recipient public, especially in contexts with prevalent anti-Western attitudes and propaganda that dismisses aid as hypocritical and disingenuous. I conducted an online survey experiment in Turkey to assess the attitudinal and quasi-behavioural effects of different types of international assistance post-disaster - conditional, unconditional, and strategic - and whether they help sway public attitudes in the face of authoritarian propaganda. Strategically distributed humanitarian aid decreased trust in the government as a defender of national interest among conservative, nationalist and Eurosceptic regime supporters, and also increased trust in European organisations. It did so partly by mitigating conspiracism and evoking positive emotions among pro-government voters whose views are hard to change. However, this comes at a cost: increased trade scepticism and decreased engagement with foreign media outlets among regime opponents. The findings have significant implications for international assistance strategies for increasing European soft power. |
| Keywords: | propaganda, polarisation, foreign aid, public support, post-disaster relief, conspiracism, experimental research, Turkey |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:diedps:327980 |