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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2026–07–27
fifteen papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Greif, Avner; Mokyr, Joel; Tabellini, Guido |
| Abstract: | Why did the industrial revolution occur in Europe and not in China, despite China being well ahead of Europe in terms of economic and technological achievements several centuries earlier? We revisit this long-standing question from a new perspective. We emphasize the importance of the different social organizations that diffused in these two parts of the world in the centuries that preceded the industrial revolution: kin-based organizations in China, vs corporations in Europe. We explain their cultural origins, and discuss how these different organizations shaped the evolution of legal systems, political institutions and human capital accumulation in these two parts of the world. Our main argument is that European corporations played a crucial role in the scientific and technological innovations that ultimately led to the industrial revolution. |
| Keywords: | China; Europe; Standard-setting organizations |
| JEL: | N00 P00 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20514 |
| By: | Bazzi, Samuel; Fiszbein, Martin |
| Abstract: | This chapter explores the impacts of migrants on the culture of their destinations. Migrants often assimilate to local social norms and practices, but they also tend to maintain their own culture. Sometimes, beyond preserving their culture, they influence their new neighbors. We propose a conceptual framework to understand when migrants shape culture at their destination — and how. We identify two key conditions for influence (ideological intensity and power structure) and three channels of influence (cultural spillovers, organizational mobilization, and political leverage). We combine insights from political economy, social psychology, and evolutionary approaches to illuminate pathways of influence in historical perspective. Our review offers a new perspective on the mechanisms of cultural transmission, using illustrative cases to characterize the various ways in which migrants shape culture in their destinations. |
| Keywords: | Culture; Migration; Power; Elites; Norms; Ideology |
| JEL: | D02 F22 J15 N30 P00 Z10 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20506 |
| By: | Campante, Filipe; Durante, Ruben; Hagemeister, Felix; Sen, Ananya |
| Abstract: | We study how AI-generated misinformation affects demand for trustworthy news, using data from a field experiment by a major German outlet, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). Readers were randomly assigned to a treatment highlighting the challenge of distinguishing real from AI-generated images. The treatment raised concern with misinformation (0.3 s.d.) and reduced trust in news (0.1 s.d.), including SZ. Importantly, it affected post-survey browsing behavior: daily visits to SZ digital content rose by 2.5% in the immediate aftermath of the treatment. Moreover, we find that subscriber retention increased by 1.1% after five months, corresponding to about a one-third drop in attrition rate. Results are consistent with a model where the relative value of trustworthy news sources increases with the prevalence of misinformation, which may thus boost engagement with those sources even while lowering trust in news content. |
| Keywords: | Generative AI; Misinformation; News media; Trust |
| JEL: | D12 L82 L86 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20526 |
| By: | Jia, Ruixue; Kung, James |
| Abstract: | This study reviews the culture and institutions of Confucianism and explores their implications for the trajectory of China’s historical development. We trace the origins and evolution of the core elements of Confucianism and synthesize research on its relationship to clan culture, state institutions, and a broad array of societal values. We also highlight promising but underexplored directions for future research. While Confucianism is often invoked to explain China’s absence from the Industrial Revolution and its lack of democratization, we caution against such retrospective determinism. As a multidimensional and abstract tradition, Confucianism likely allows for varied interpretations and institutional adaptations across time and context. |
| Keywords: | Confucianism; Industrial revolution; Comparative development |
| JEL: | Z10 Z13 O43 P51 N15 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20375 |
| By: | Bigoni, Maria; Camera, Gabriele; Gallo, Edoardo |
| Abstract: | Globalization offers unparalleled opportunities to expand welfare through cooperation across large networks of unrelated individuals. Social exclusion – permanent or temporary – and monetary exchange are institutions that in theory can incentivize cooperation. In an experiment, we evaluate their relative performance and interaction in anonymous networks of different sizes. Permanent social exclusion (ostracism) reduces long-run economic potential by leading to sparse networks. Monetary exchange and temporary social exclusion perform similarly well in small networks. In large networks, however, monetary exchange is the only institution that promotes full cooperation by crowding out ostracism and keeping the network complete. An insight is that monetary systems outperform social exclusion mechanisms in promoting cooperation in globalized social and economic networks. |
| Keywords: | Social exclusion |
| JEL: | C92 E40 D85 C73 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20481 |
| By: | Kotschy, Rainer; Sunde, Uwe |
| Abstract: | Men and women differ systematically in measures of patience, risk-taking, trust, and prosociality. While literature documents such gender gaps in numerous countries throughout the world, recent work suggests an association between these gender gaps and economic development, based on evidence of larger gender gaps in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies. However, little is known about how these gender gaps evolve and whether they indeed widen as countries develop. To examine this question, we analyze how within-country gender gaps in patience, risk-taking, trust, and prosociality have evolved across birth cohorts worldwide. We compare these gender gaps across country--period--cohort cells using two survey data sets that cover 460, 000 people in more than 100 countries. Our results document that gender gaps in patience, risk-taking, trust, and prosociality have declined across birth cohorts. This evidence rejects the notion that these gender gaps widen as countries develop and instead points to a decline in socioeconomic differences between men and women. |
| Keywords: | Patience |
| JEL: | D01 J10 J11 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20706 |
| By: | Patacchini, Eleonora; Wu, Qi |
| Abstract: | We study how face-to-face interactions shape worker mobility through social networks. Using granular cellphone geolocation and sociodemographic data on 3.3 million workers in a large urban labor market, we exploit settings in which multiple friends of the same worker relocate to jobs within the same destination area. Within the same worker and destination, face-to-face interaction with a friend increases the probability of moving to that friend’s workplace by 36-43 percent relative to remote communication, with effects substantially larger than those of phone calls or digital messaging. Consistent with referral models, the effect emerges only after the friend joins the destination firm and disappears in pre-move placebo periods. A data-driven heterogeneity analysis using regularized machine learning reveals a pronounced targeting gradient: effects in the highest predicted-return settings are more than twice as large as the population average. We interpret these findings through a simple referral model in which interaction technology shapes the effectiveness of information transmission, showing that mobility depends not only on the presence of social ties but on how information flows within them. |
| Keywords: | Employment; Communication technology; Agglomeration economies |
| JEL: | R23 J60 L15 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20447 |
| By: | Galbiati, Roberto; Henry, Emeric; Jacquemet, Nicolas |
| Abstract: | What actions other people judge appropriate drives pro-social behavior. We show that such judgments depend on whether the observers previously faced the situation they judge (active observers) or not (passive observers). In an online giving experiment, active observers make more polarized judgments than passive ones — those who acted pro-socially judge selfish behavior more harshly and praise pro-social actions more. Moreover, active observers persistently avoid payoff-relevant information, both as dictators, likely to maintain their self-image, and then as observers. Our results imply a new link between descriptive (what most people do) and injunctive norms (what groups deem appropriate). |
| Keywords: | Injunctive norms |
| JEL: | C90 D64 |
| Date: | 2025–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20355 |
| By: | Lockwood, Ben (University of Warwick); Le, Minh Tung (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the implications of three stylized facts about trust in political institutions for the role of elections in improving discipline, constraining pandering, and improving selection of politicians. First, trust in political institutions (politicians, political parties, and the legislature) has declined in recent years. Second, within countries, there is heterogeneity across citizens in their level of trust in institutions, and third, at the individual level, trust is malleable, especially when young. We add these features to an otherwise standard model of electoral agency. Unlike the standard model, where the quality of the candidate pool is assumed known, citizens are born with imprecise and heterogeneous priors over the quality of the pool, so young citizens learn not only about the incumbent, but also about the pool quality. An increase in precision increases both the discipline and selection effects of elections, whereas an increase in heterogeneity of prior beliefs has the opposite effect. The effect of changes in average trust in the population is generally ambiguous. When candidate entry is modelled, these findings extend to endogenous pool quality. The implications for citizen welfare and civics education are discussed. |
| Keywords: | elections, discipline, pandering, selection, trust in political institutions, civic education JEL codes: H11, C72 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1620 |
| By: | Matavelli, Ieda; Grosjean, Pauline; De Haas, Ralph; Baranov, Victoria |
| Abstract: | While economists have extensively studied gender norms affecting women, masculinity norms---social norms about how men should behave ---remain underexplored. This review first synthesizes how other disciplines have studied masculinity, providing economists with conceptual foundations and empirical patterns for understanding masculinity norms. We then discuss how the study of masculinity norms can inform the economics literature on gender gaps and men's outcomes across multiple domains: health behavior, labor supply and occupational choice, violence and aggression, and political preferences. We also discuss paths for the transmission and persistence of these norms. Finally, using novel survey data from 70 countries, we present five stylized facts about masculinity norms. We document substantial global variation in these norms and demonstrate their predictive power for various socioeconomic and political outcomes. |
| JEL: | D91 I12 J16 J24 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20549 |
| By: | Menéndez, Luis; Montolio, Daniel; Mueller, Hannes; Slataper, Francesco |
| Abstract: | This article exploits data from a political conflict between language groups to show how political events can rapidly redefine how these groups interact on social media. Leveraging on a unique dataset of 26 million retweets by 120 000 Catalan- and Spanish-speaking Twitter users, we estimate individual exposure to tweets with a network-based model. We then compare two shocks in the same region and year: the Barcelona terror attack and the Catalan independence referendum of 2017. The referendum, and related police violence, triggered a sharp, symmetric jump in retweeting across language groups. The terror attack, by contrast, did not lead to a similar realignment. |
| Keywords: | Social Networks; Polarization |
| JEL: | D74 C55 C45 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20559 |
| By: | Hünewaldt, Victoria; Weinig, Max |
| Abstract: | We study how newspaper narratives shape public beliefs and policy preferences during a period of high inflation in Germany 2021–2023. We conducted an online survey experiment with a broadly representative sample of 4, 150 respondents, half of them randomly assigned to one of three inflation narrative treatments: 1) pent-up demand, 2) the energy-price crisis, or 3) corporate price gouging. We find strong baseline political polarization in support for inflation-mitigating policies, while respondents broadly agree on the distributional consequences of inflation. Pre-existing individual causal attributions about inflation correlate with inflation inequality beliefs and policy preferences but prove largely resistant to experimental updating, on average. Among right-leaning respondents, however, exposure to inflation narratives substantially increases support for redistributive and regulatory policies, reducing the baseline partisan gap by up to 80%. This effect is concentrated among respondents on the moderate right who identify with the AfD and exhibit low trust in government, suggesting that, when confronted with inflation as an economic problem, government skepticism is channeled into demand for stronger state protection. |
| Keywords: | inflation;public perceptions;polarization;survey experiment |
| JEL: | D63 D72 D83 E31 E60 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:140238 |
| By: | Bauer, Michal; Chytilová, Julie |
| Abstract: | Ethnic hostility can fuel violent conflicts between ethnic groups. Thus, a fundamental question is how common desire to malevolently harm ethnic out-group members is, and in what situations it is most prone to manifest. This chapter reviews advances in the study of these questions, revolving along three complementary themes. First, we focus on measurement of ethnic hostility. We describe behavioral tasks designed to identify unambiguously hostile behavior and different ways to signal ethnic identity. We also discuss methodological challenges and ways that researchers have used to address them. Second, we review evidence that tests the existence of ethnic biases in pro-social and hostile behavior. While there is a rich body of lab-in-the-field experiments measuring ethnic biases in pro-social behavior, there are still only a handful of studies measuring ethnic biases in purely hostile behavior. Third, given that many real-life inter-group conflicts are characterized by relatively sudden changes in the behavior of masses towards aggression, an active area of research has begun to explore potential triggers and magnifiers of the strength of group identity, and of group-based pro-sociality and hostility. We review studies that focus on the roles of financial scarcity, stress, exposure to war, and social influences that unravel social norms. We highlight common patterns and suggest open questions in this important research agenda. |
| Keywords: | Randomized experiments |
| JEL: | D74 D91 J15 Z12 C93 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20402 |
| By: | Campbell, Arthur; Leister, Matthew; Ushchev, Philip; Zenou, Yves |
| Abstract: | We develop a simple model of content filtering-the tendency of individuals to selectively forward information that aligns with their ideological preference-to study how network structure shapes the distribution of political content. In our framework, individuals and content are horizontally differentiated into three types (left, middle, right). We show that content filtering can amplify the middle or the extremes and may result in only centrist content (full moderation) or only extreme content (full polarization). The outcome depends on the interaction between two forces: a preference advantage from the relative prevalence of types in the population, and a pairwise comparison advantage that systematically favors centrist content. Network density plays a critical role. Sparse networks robustly yield moderation, even when extreme types dominate the population, while dense networks replicate the population's type distribution. Intermediate densities generate non-monotonic comparative statics, including sharp transitions between moderation and polarization. These findings complement existing empirical results that emphasize the types of connections individuals have on social media by highlighting how the number of connections, holding their composition fixed, may fundamentally shape the information environment in ways that foster/mitigate populism and polarization. |
| JEL: | D83 D85 L83 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20729 |
| By: | Katharina Brütt (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Eve Ernst (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | Paternalistic policies are pervasive, yet little is known about how relationships between decision-makers and targets shape them. This paper examines how social proximity -- the degree to which individuals share identity-defining traits – influences paternalistic interventions. In an experiment with a representative U.S. sample, we manipulate proximity and distinguish between preference-responsive paternalism, reflecting one’s own preferences, and belief-responsive paternalism, reflecting beliefs about others’ preferences. Social proximity leaves the overall frequency of restrictions unchanged but shifts their driver: low proximity fosters preference-responsive paternalism, while high proximity promotes belief-responsive paternalism. Non-religious and independents restrict least; Christians and Republicans restrict more dissimilar others. |
| Keywords: | Paternalism, Social identity, Social proximity, Experiment |
| JEL: | C91 D12 D15 D91 |
| Date: | 2025–12–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20250068 |