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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2026–05–04
twelve papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Enrico Rubolino |
| Abstract: | Declining civic engagement increasingly strains welfare state institutions. This paper asks whether civic values can be shaped through early educational investments. I study Tax and School, a large-scale program implemented in Italian primary and secondary schools to promote fiscal and civic responsibility. Exploiting staggered cross-municipality adoption, I find that exposure increases students' intrinsic motivation for rule compliance and reduces antisocial behaviors, particularly in socio-economically disadvantaged contexts. These student-level responses gradually aggregate into community-level outcomes: exposed municipalities later exhibit higher voter turnout and stronger support for redistributive policies. Survey evidence points to belief updating about the value of public goods and the role of government in mitigating inequality as a central mechanism. Counterfactual simulations imply that scaling the program could attenuate the secular decline in voter turnout. |
| Keywords: | civic capital; civic education; tax morale; political participation |
| JEL: | I21 H26 D72 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26096 |
| By: | Canini, Renata; González, Felipe; Prem, Mounu |
| Abstract: | We study how violent encounters between police and civilians shape citizens' trust in the state. We combine nearly 750, 000 survey responses from seventeen Latin American countries with a new dataset of high-profile police-civilian fatalities. Exploiting the timing of these events relative to survey interviews, we provide causal evidence on their effects. Civilian deaths caused by police reduce trust in state institutions, while police-officer deaths caused by civilians increase it, with no effects on interpersonal trust. These effects arise only when events are covered by the media, indicating that information diffusion - rather than violence per se - drives changes in trust. |
| Keywords: | state, police, trust, Latin America |
| JEL: | D72 D83 K42 O17 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1745 |
| By: | Astruc--Le Souder, Mael (Bordeaux University); Bargain, Olivier (University of Bordeaux); Knecht, Niclas (Bordeaux University) |
| Abstract: | Trust in others is essential for the well-functioning of societies. While economists often study its longer-term determinants, short-term fluctuation may be equally critical, particularly during pivotal moments (e.g, elections) or periods requiring social cohesion (e.g., pandemics). Hope plays a similarly vital role in shaping individual well-being, behavior, and societal stability. We investigate the short-run plasticity of trust and hope by reactivating threat exposure similar to that encountered in media coverage. In an online experiment, individuals are randomly exposed to short videos depicting terrorism, natural disasters, or war. Both social trust and hope are significantly malleable, declining by 12%-28% of a standard deviation (across models) in response to these brief interventions. We observe strong heterogeneity in these effects, particularly along lines of political orientation and social media usage, and explore their co-movements with basic emotions. Our findings suggest that routine exposure to threatening content can destabilize the emotional underpinnings of trust and hope, with potential implications for key individual and collective behaviors. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18554 |
| By: | Yves Zenou |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical foundations of peer and network effects, aiming to bridge insights from both literatures. We first examine the main identification challenges in linear-in-means models-reflection, correlated effects, and sorting-and show how introducing explicit network structures can help address them. We also review reduced-form strategies based on within-school cohort composition, exposure to peers' shocks, random assignment, and exogenous variation in network links. The analysis then develops the microfoundations of peer effects through linear-quadratic network games, linking equilibrium behavior to network centrality and highlighting the role of key players. Using this framework, we discuss how structural models of network formation and individual effort choices can resolve endogeneity concerns. The paper concludes with recent advances on non-linear and multiplex interactions, where individuals respond to specific peers and operate across multiple, interdependent layers. |
| Keywords: | Social interactions; Identification; Network games; Centrality; Multiplex networks; Non-linearities. |
| JEL: | A14 C57 D85 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25118 |
| By: | Arthur Campbell; C. Matthew Leister; Philip Ushchev; Yves Zenou |
| 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. |
| Keywords: | Social networks, network density, content filtering, polarization |
| JEL: | D83 D85 L82 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2582 |
| By: | Moses Shayo; Victor Lavy |
| Abstract: | We study how teachers' rule violations in grading affect students' ethical behavior. Using administrative data from high-stakes exams, combining teacher-assigned internal scores with externally graded national exam scores, we track teacher grading violations and subsequent student cheating. We explore three potential mechanisms: imitation (learning that rules can be broken), positive reciprocity (responding favorably to favorable treatment), and negative reciprocity (retaliating against unfavorable treatment). Exploiting within-student variation in exposure to different teachers, we find students are significantly more likely to cheat when teachers break the rules to their detriment (systematically undergrading), consistent with both imitation and negative reciprocity. However, when teachers systematically overgrade, responses vary by community structure. In heterogeneous communities, overgrading increases student cheating, suggesting imitation dominates. In homogeneous communities, students respond by cheating less, consistent with positive reciprocity dominating. This pattern holds across multiple homogeneity measures, including surname concentration and residential clustering. Survey measures of mutual respect and support between students and teachers confirm this pattern. |
| Keywords: | Teachers ethical behavior, Grading Rules, Student's cheating, Imitation, Reciprocity, Community Structure, Transmission of Ethical Behavior |
| JEL: | I20 J00 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26070 |
| 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. |
| Keywords: | managers, gender gaps, corporate culture, multinationals |
| JEL: | J16 J24 F23 M14 M5 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26040 |
| By: | Leonardo Bursztyn (University of Chicago & NBER); Angela Duckworth (University of Pennsylvania); Rafael Jiménez-Durán (Bocconi University, IGIER, CEPR, CESifo, & Stigler Center); Aaron Leonard (University of Chicago); Filip Milojević (University of Chicago); Christopher Roth (University of Cologne, ECONtribute, NHH Norwegian School of Economics, MPI for Behavioral Economics, & CEPR); Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard Law School) |
| Abstract: | In December 2025, Australia became the first country to ban youth under 16 years old from holding accounts on major social media platforms, a policy now under consideration in more than a dozen countries and in numerous states. Because social media use is inherently social, the effectiveness of a ban that is easy to circumvent may depend on whether compliance reaches a tipping point: a share of compliant peers high enough to make it optimal for individuals to comply themselves. We surveyed 746 Australian teenagers four months after the ban took effect and find that only about one in four 14–15-year-olds comply. The social environment around use has barely moved: most banned teens believe that their peers are still using banned platforms and cite social reasons for continuing use. Sustaining high compliance requires two ingredients: the share of compliers must be high enough and those who comply must find it preferable to continue complying. The current ban achieves neither. Teenagers report that they require roughly two-thirds of peers to stop using social media to stop themselves, far above the share currently complying. They also perceive compliers as less popular than non-compliers, so the more influential teens disproportionately stay on the platforms. Together, these patterns suggest that compliance is more likely to diminish than to rise. Sustaining higher compliance will likely require pairing the ban with instruments that act on social norms and individual incentives directly. |
| Keywords: | Social media ban, tipping points, coordination, compliance, network effects, peer effects, social norms, adolescents, technology regulation, Australia |
| JEL: | D85 D91 I18 L51 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:406 |
| By: | Bastien Chabé-Ferret (Middlesex University & IZA@LISER); Zainab Iftikhar (University of Bonn & CEPR); JungJae Park (Yonsei University) |
| Abstract: | This paper quantifies the contributions of social norms and economic incentives to the 350-hour annual gap in maternal labor supply between East and West Germany. Using a collective model of family formation and labor supply estimated on GSOEP data from 2000–2017, we find that the working-mother stigma accounts for 73 percent of the gap. Economic factors partially offset the norm: higher Western wages raise the opportunity cost of staying home, so equalizing wages in West to the levels in East would nearly double the gap. We show that standard policy reforms may actually widen the regional disparity, and that their effectiveness is conditional on the norm being present: once removed, the same policies have negligible effects. |
| Keywords: | Social norms, economic incentives, marriage, cohabitation, working mothers |
| JEL: | J01 J08 J12 J13 J22 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:405 |
| By: | Martin Nybom; Kjell G. Salvanes; José V. Rodríguez Mora |
| Abstract: | This chapter reviews recent advances on the drivers of intergenerational persistence in education and income, with a focus on causal mechanisms shaping social mobility across OECD countries. While the descriptive literature is vast, documenting substantial correlations between parents' and children's outcomes, recent research increasingly emphasizes the underlying factors driving these patterns. We begin with a brief illustration of global variation in intergenerational mobility using harmonized cross-country data, before turning to the literature on mechanisms. We outline a general theoretical framework, which organizes the discussion around three domains: pre-market factors (e.g., early childhood investment, parenting, education systems), labor market dynamics (e.g., sorting, networks, firm heterogeneity), and post-market institutions. We review topics such as the timing and nature of parental investments, parenting styles, credit constraints, neighborhood effects, and the role of social networks in school and on the labor market. We highlight how new data and empirical designs have broadened our understanding of the drivers of intergenerational inequality and, ultimately, interventions with the potential to mitigate it. |
| Keywords: | Intergenerational Mobility, Social networks, Neighborhoods, Labor market |
| JEL: | J62 J13 D85 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26054 |
| By: | Michele Belot; Rustam Hakimov |
| Abstract: | We design an intervention to foster social ties at work and evaluate its impact on performance and retention. We run a cluster-randomized field experiment in a large microfinance firm, providing small subsidies for geographically spread offices to organize biweekly social activities over three months. The intervention increases perceived collegiality and workplace friendships by about 0.2-0.25 SD. Individual productivity is unchanged, but office-level team performance in the firm's competition improves in the final intervention month and employee turnover falls by about 4-4.5 pp from a 9-13% baseline in the following months. The pattern is consistent with bonding mitigating free-riding in team tasks and raising job utility as a non-wage amenity; survey evidence suggests an additional role for reciprocity toward the firm. |
| Keywords: | Workplace Collegiality, Climate, Bonding, Field Experiment |
| JEL: | M54 J32 C93 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26033 |
| By: | Henrik Jacobsen Kleven; Camille Landais; Anne Sophie Lassen; Philip Rosenbaum; Herdis Steingrimsdottir; Jakob Egholt Søgaard |
| Abstract: | We study whether policy can shift gendered beliefs, norms, and labor market outcomes by exploiting a major expansion of earmarked paternity leave in Denmark. The reform generated large first-stage effects, substantially reallocating leave from mothers to fathers. Using a regression discontinuity design combined with new survey data linked to administrative records, we show that the reform makes parents more supportive of paternity leave, shifts gender-role beliefs in a progressive direction, and reduces perceived differences in childcare ability. The reform also narrows gender gaps in earnings and hours worked. The earnings gap falls by 34pp in the first year following childbirth (during leave) and by 2.8pp in the second year (after leave). These results demonstrate that policy can meaningfully influence beliefs, norms, and gender inequality. On the other hand, earmarking restricts families' ability to allocate leave freely and lowers leave satisfaction, highlighting a central trade-off inherent in paternalistic policies. |
| Keywords: | paternity leave, gender norms, gender wage gap |
| JEL: | J13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12614 |