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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2026–02–16
seven papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Eliana La Ferrara; David H. Yanagizawa-Drott |
| Abstract: | We survey recent research on changing culture and social norms in developing countries and propose a simple framework to interpret these changes. We conceptualize individual utility from a given action as a function of three components: intrinsic valuations, material payoffs, and social interactions. Using this lens, we review evidence on interventions that target each component and their interactions. First, we discuss efforts to shift intrinsic values through schooling and curricula, information campaigns, mass media, and empowerment programs, with particular attention to gender norms, intimate partner violence, and harmful practices such as female genital cutting. Second, we examine social determinants of behavior, including misperceptions about others’ beliefs, coordination failures, and the role of intermediate “stepping-stone” actions in facilitating or hindering norm transitions. Third, we analyze how changes in material incentives, via labor market opportunities, transfers, and legal reforms, affect behavior and underlying norms. Throughout, we highlight methodological challenges in measuring norms and identifying mechanisms, and we emphasize that policy effects depend critically on existing social structures and belief distributions. We conclude by outlining open questions from a positive and normative perspective. |
| JEL: | J20 O12 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34784 |
| By: | Alabrese, Eleonora; Capozza, Francesco; Garg, Prashant |
| Abstract: | As social media becomes prominent within academia, we examine its reputational costs for academics. Analyzing Twitter posts from 98, 000 scientists (2016-22), we uncover substantial political expression. Online experiments with 4, 000 U.S. respondents and 135 journalists, rating synthetic academic profiles with different political affiliations, reveal that politically neutral scientists are seen as the most credible. Strikingly, political expressions result in monotonic penalties: Stronger posts more greatly reduce the perceived credibility of scientists and their research and audience engagement, particularly among oppositely aligned respondents. Two surveys with scientists highlight their awareness of penalties, their perceived benefits, and a consensus on limiting political expression outside their expertise. |
| Keywords: | Twitter, Scientists' Credibility, Polarization, Online Experiment |
| JEL: | C93 D72 D83 I23 Z10 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbiii:336443 |
| By: | Virginia Minni; Kieu-Trang Nguyen; Heather Sarsons; Carla Srebot |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how managers’ gender attitudes shape workplace culture and gender inequality. Using data from a multinational firm operating in over 100 countries, we leverage cross-country manager rotations to identify the effects of male managers' gender attitudes on gender pay gaps within a team. Managers from countries with one standard deviation more progressive gender attitudes reduce the pay gap by 5 percentage points (18%), largely through higher promotion rates for women. These effects persist after managers rotate out and are strongest in more conservative countries. Managers with progressive attitudes also influence the local office culture, as local managers who interact with but are not under the purview of the foreign manager begin to have smaller pay gaps in their teams. Our evidence points to individual managers as critical in shaping corporate culture. |
| JEL: | F23 J16 M14 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34782 |
| By: | Feltham, Eric Martin (Columbia University); Christakis, Nicholas |
| Abstract: | Homophily, the tendency for individuals to associate with similar others, has long been treated as a central principle of social organization. Yet people may overestimate its importance in reasoning about their social networks. Here, we investigate individuals’ cognitive expectations of homophily and compare these expectations to actual homophily among 10, 072 adults in 82 isolated Honduras villages. We elicited subjects’ beliefs about whether pairs of people in their village social networks were socially tied. We show that people deploy cognitive heuristics that substantially overestimate homophily, including based on wealth, ethnicity, gender, and religion. We also find that people exploit network structure when predicting ties between others, independent of expectations about homophily. Understanding cognitive homophily has implications for models of network formation, interventions targeting social behavior and information diffusion, and the maintenance of social inequality. |
| Date: | 2026–01–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:z4nyq_v2 |
| By: | Jimmy Graham; Horacio Larreguy; Pablo Querubín |
| Abstract: | This chapter surveys the economics and political science literature on clientelism. We define clientelism as the exchange of votes or electoral participation for targeted material benefits and argue that it undermines electoral accountability, fostering rent-seeking and the underprovision of public goods. We document the prevalence of clientelism across countries and over time and examine how economic underdevelopment both facilitates clientelistic practices and may be perpetuated by them. We then analyze the agency problems that characterize clientelistic exchanges, focusing on broker–voter and politician–broker relationships, and review evidence on the roles of monitoring, selection, and social networks in sustaining these relationships. Finally, we discuss how clientelistic machines are financed, assess interventions aimed at weakening clientelism and promoting programmatic competition, and outline directions for future research. |
| JEL: | D72 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34761 |
| By: | Pisch, Frank; Rossmann, Vitus; Jussupow, Ekaterina; Ingendahl, Franziska; Undorf, Monika |
| Abstract: | Ever more frequent and intense collaboration with agents based on Large Language Models (LLMs) at work and in daily life raises the question of whether this affects how humans view and treat each other. We conducted a randomized laboratory experiment with 158 participants who collaborated with either a human or an LLM-based assistant to solve a complex language task. Afterwards, we measured whether the type of collaborator influenced participants’ prosocial attitudes (through implicit association tests) and behavior (in dictator games). Interacting with an LLM-based assistant led to a reduction of prosociality, but only for participants who identified as female. A mediation analysis suggests that these findings are due to an erosion of trust in the LLM-based assistant's benevolence in the female subsample. Such spillover effects of collaborating with AI on interactions between humans must feature in the evaluation of the societal consequences of artificial intelligence and warrant further research. |
| Date: | 2025–10–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dar:wpaper:158953 |
| By: | Soria, Chris; Feehan, Dennis |
| Abstract: | Personal networks influence health and mortality at the individual level, but less is known about how population-scale social network structure relates to mortality. This study examines how US county-level social network structure relates to mortality disparities. Using measures from 21 billion Facebook friendships, we investigate how two structural features of population social networks – cohesiveness and diversity – are associated with age-standardized and age-specific mortality rates. Bivariate results show that measures of social network structure rival smoking rates, median income, and educational attainment in their association with mortality rates. Social network structure remains predictive of mortality even after controlling for traditional measures like socioeconomic status and rural/urban classification. Network diversity is associated with lower mortality in both bivariate and multivariate analyses. Network clustering is associated with higher mortality bivariately, but this association reverses after controlling for county-level demographic and socioeconomic factors, revealing a protective effect masked by confounding. Age-stratified analyses further complicate this picture, showing that clustering predicts lower mortality among adults aged 15-64 but higher mortality among those 70 and older. These findings highlight social network structure as an important dimension of place-based health disparities, one not fully captured by conventional measures of socioeconomic composition or spatial segregation. |
| Date: | 2026–01–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:kvmx6_v3 |