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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2025–02–17
six papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Hussain, Ahmed; Ritzen, Jo (Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, RS: GSBE MGSoG, RS: UNU-MERIT Theme 3) |
| Abstract: | We explore empirically the relationship between trust in government and the quality of government (QoG) with a dynamic panel model for the period 2006-2021 in the 38 OECD countries, with reverse and lag specifications while incorporating a range of social, political, and economic factors as explanatory variables. The results show a clear positive mutually reinforcing dynamic between QoG and trust in government when the social, political and economic factors are included. Trust in government with a three-year lag is positively related to QoG. Foreign-born population with a three-year lag is negatively associated with QoG. The other way around: trust in government is affected by the QoG in the same year. Economic decline reduces trust in government. QoG and trust appear to be embedded in culture (measured with the Hofstede indices). Power distance is negatively related to both QoG and institutional trust. The association between individualism and QoG is positive, while long-term orientation and indulgence positively impact trust. |
| JEL: | D31 D73 D78 E61 H50 H83 I38 O10 Z13 Z18 Z19 |
| Date: | 2023–09–18 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2023029 |
| By: | George Beknazar-Yuzbashev; Rafael Jiménez-Durán; Jesse McCrosky; Mateusz Stalinski |
| Abstract: | Most social media users have encountered harassment online, but there is scarce evidence of how this type of toxic content impacts engagement. In a pre-registered browser extension field experiment, we randomly hid toxic content for six weeks on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Lowering exposure to toxicity reduced advertising impressions, time spent, and other measures of engagement, and reduced the toxicity of user-generated content. A survey experiment provides evidence that toxicity triggers curiosity and that engagement and welfare are not necessarily aligned. Taken together, our results suggest that platforms face a trade-off between curbing toxicity and increasing engagement. |
| Keywords: | toxic content, moderation, social media, user engagement, browser experiment |
| JEL: | C93 D12 D83 D90 I31 L82 L86 M37 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11644 |
| By: | Florian Heine; Arno Riedl |
| Abstract: | Economic and social situations where groups have to compete are ubiquitous. Such group contests create both a coordination problem within and between groups. Introducing leaders may help to mitigate these coordination problems. However, little is known about the effect of leadership in group contests. We conduct a group contest experiment, comparing two types of leadership—leading-by-example and transactional leadership— and investigating the effect of communication between leaders. We find that the introduction of leaders tends to increase contest investment, except for when leaders of competing groups can communicate. Transactional leaders increase followers’ investment through the allocation of a relatively larger share of the prize to followers who have invested more. Communication between leaders decreases contest investments when there is leading-by-example but not when there is transactional leadership. Overall, leaders do not mitigate the over-investment problem in group contests. |
| Keywords: | rent-seeking, group contest, leadership |
| JEL: | C92 D03 D72 D74 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11655 |
| By: | Nicolas Jacquemet (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Stéphane Luchini; Jason Shogren; Adam Zylbersztejn |
| Abstract: | Under incomplete contracts, the mutual belief in reciprocity facilitates how traders create value through economic exchange. Creating such beliefs among strangers can be challenging even when they are allowed to communicate, because communication is cheap. In this paper, we first extend the literature showing that a truth-telling oath increases honesty to a sequential trust game with pre-play, fixed-form, and cheap-talk communication. Our results confirm that the oath creates more trust and cooperative behavior thanks to an improvement in communication; but we also show that the oath induces selection into communication -it makes people more wary of using communication, precisely because communication speaks louder under oath. We next designed additional treatments featuring mild and deterrent fines for deception to measure the monetary equivalent of the non-monetary incentives implemented by a truth-telling oath. We find that the oath is behaviorally equivalent to mild fines. The deterrent fine induces the highest level of cooperation. Altogether, these results confirm that allowing for interactions under oath within a trust game with communication creates significantly more economic value than the identical exchange institutions without the oath. |
| Keywords: | Trust game, cooperation, communication, commitment, deception, fine, oath |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-04722343 |
| By: | Roberto Galbiati (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Emeric Henry (Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Paris); Nicolas Jacquemet (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | Formal enforcement punishing defectors can sustain cooperation by changing incentives. In this paper, we introduce a second effect of enforcement: it can also affect the capacity to learn about the group's cooperativeness. Indeed, in contexts with strong enforcement, it is difficult to tell apart those who cooperate because of the threat of fines from those who are intrinsically cooperative types. Whenever a group is intrinsically cooperative, enforcement will thus have a negative dynamic effect on cooperation because it slows down learning about prevalent values in the group that would occur under a weaker enforcement. We provide theoretical and experimental evidence in support of this mechanism. Using a lab experiment with independent interactions and random rematching, we observe that, in early interactions, having faced an environment with fines in the past decreases current cooperation. We further show that this results from the interaction between enforcement and learning: the effect of having met cooperative partners has a stronger effect on current cooperation when this happened in an environment with no enforcement. Replacing one signal of deviation without fine by a signal of cooperation without fine in a player's history increases current cooperation by 10%; while replacing it by a signal of cooperation with fine increases current cooperation by only 5%. |
| Keywords: | Enforcement, social values, cooperation, learning, spillovers, repeated games, experiments |
| Date: | 2024–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:pseptp:hal-04511257 |
| By: | Nigus, Halefom; Mohnen, Pierre (RS: GSBE other - not theme-related research, QE Econometrics); Nillesen, Eleonora (RS: GSBE UM-BIC, Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, RS: GSBE MGSoG); Di Falco, S. |
| Abstract: | Using two lab-in-the-field experiments, we study whether initial transgression promote subsequent anti-social behavior. In the first stage subjects participated in an experimental market game. In the second stage, subjects were given an opportunity to participate in antisocial experiment. We find that subjects who impose a negative externality on uninvolved third parties in the market game are also more likely to burn their partner's income in the second experiment. This finding is consistent with a conscience-numbing effect but could possibly also be explained by participants' preferences for consistency. |
| JEL: | C93 D03 D62 D63 M14 |
| Date: | 2023–08–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2023027 |