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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2026–07–20
nine papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Braccioli, Federica; Daniele, Gianmarco; Martinangeli, Andrea |
| Abstract: | Democratic institutions worldwide are facing rising distrust. We posit that establishing data-driven narratives on long-term social progress and holding institutions accountable for it can restore confidence in institutions. We focus on public safety, a domain in which progress can be quantified by declining violence across industrialized countries. We implement a large-scale online experiment in Italy, a country particularly prone to negative narratives, exposing 7, 000 adults to data-driven narratives on declining homicide rates, justice efficiency, and corruption reduction in the last twenty years. The information significantly increases social and institutional trust, including incentivised donations to a law enforcement–related organization (effects of 6–9% of a standard deviation). These findings persist fifty days later in a follow-up survey. Effects are strongest when social progress is explicitly linked to state action and for individuals holding more negative views. Both positive news and accountability dynamics drive the results. These findings offer a pathway to counter persistent disillusionment in democratic governance, by showing how aligning public perceptions with societal progress can restore institutional trust. |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20902 |
| By: | Goodhart, Charles; Vu, Ly Hoang |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the personal characteristics that determine the extent of Trust in Government, using over 400, 000 observations from 97 countries provided by surveys held during the years 1990-2023. These survey data reveal how persons’ individual characteristics influence such trust. Most of these relationships are intuitive, for example that people who are satisfied, secured, immigrants, elderly and female, tend to trust government more. On the other hand, those in employment and living in cities tend to have lower trust, for reasons that we explain. Perhaps our main finding, and the key result of the paper, is that those who obtain their news primarily from traditional sources, i.e. newspapers and television, tend to trust government more, while those who have their main source of information from social media trust government less. We also study whether the geographical location of the respondent influences their Trust in Government. What we find is that the effect of these personal characteristics is remarkably common, wherever the respondent is located, unlike the response to other external economic and geopolitical factors which tend often to vary between one region and another. |
| Keywords: | Media; Democracy; Trust in the government |
| JEL: | A13 H10 H11 L82 O5 P17 P47 P52 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21137 |
| By: | Bowles, Samuel; Carlin, Wendy |
| Abstract: | Interactions in civil society – in firms, families, neighborhoods, identity groups, and other face-to-face settings – have in common that relationships are personal and enduring, and as a result, identity and other-regarding preferences are important motivations (for better or worse). Here we add civil society to markets and states as a third form of governance of the economy, creating the governance triangle. We provide evidence that themes related to civil society have assumed substantially greater importance in economic research since the 1970s. We use a standard principal-agent model of employment in private firms to reveal three characteristics of interactions in civil society: the role of face-to-face interactions, social norms, and the private exercise of power. We show that market failures and other coordination problems can sometimes be more successfully addressed by civil society than by state or market governance. Civil society may have comparative institutional advantage where information available to state and market actors is limited, restricting the reach of complete contracts and enforceable government regulations, conditional on conflicts of interest being modest. When based on us-versus-them forms of identity, however, civil society governance may promote preferences antithetical to a liberal and democratic society. |
| JEL: | B21 B41 C38 D02 D23 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21085 |
| By: | Minni, Virginia; Nguyen, Kieutrang; Sarsons, Heather; Srebot, Carla |
| 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:cpr:ceprdp:21201 |
| By: | Müller, Karsten; Schwarz, Carlo; Shen, Zekai |
| Abstract: | Social media platforms are often credited with empowering grassroots movements in the pursuit of political freedoms. In this paper, we show how social media can also be exploited by political elites to undermine democratic institutions, using the January 6th, 2021 Capitol insurrection as a case study. We present three main findings. First, by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in Twitter usage, we document that social media exposure predicts participation in the Capitol attack, donations for anti-democratic causes, beliefs in election fraud, and support for the January 6th rioters. Second, Donald Trump's tweets questioning the election's integrity were followed by spikes in "Stop the Steal" activity on Twitter and pro-Trump donations originating from high Twitter usage counties. Third, the insurrection and Trump's account deletion were followed by a decrease in the public expression of toxic political and "Stop the Steal" messaging by pro-Trump users on Twitter, but had little effect on privately held beliefs about the election outcome and pro-Trump donations. |
| JEL: | L82 J15 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21168 |
| By: | Robert Gonzalez; Seunghun Chung; Ahmad Shah Mobariz |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of mobile phone expansion on gender norms in Afghanistan. We combine cell tower data from the country’s largest operator with nationally representative survey data on attitudes toward women’s education, employment, and leadership. Using lightning strike intensity as an instrument for network expansion, we find that greater mobile access lead to more progressive views toward women’s education and employment, particularly among men. Women’s support for female leadership also increased while men’s stated views did not change. We explore information and labor supply channels as potential mechanisms driving these effects. We find little evidence for a labor market participation channel, suggesting that information access—both direct and via networks—is more likely to explain the observed attitudinal changes. While we find no downstream effects on women’s schooling or employment participation, mobile expansion increased votes for female candidates, the number of women running, and the share elected to office. These results suggest that expanding access to mobile technology can weaken restrictive gender norms even in settings with strong cultural constraints. |
| Keywords: | culture, gender norms, phone access |
| JEL: | H0 O3 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:457 |
| By: | Zenou, Yves |
| 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. |
| JEL: | A14 C57 D85 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20814 |
| By: | Hira Kaleem (Lahore School of Economics); Anri Sakakibara (Technical University of Munich (TUM)); Waqar Wadho (Lahore School of Economics); Abu Siddique (Royal Holloway & IFS) |
| Abstract: | Female labor force participation in LMICs remains persistently low, despite improvements in women’s education, fertility, and income that would normally predict higher participation. We argue that this pattern can reflect a coordination failure sustained by miscalibrated second-order beliefs about community approval of women working outside the home. In many households, a woman’s employment is determined by more than one decision-maker, and each may care about the perceived approval of both men and women in the community. Therefore, the binding misperception can lie in any of four belief cells: men’s beliefs about men, men’s beliefs about women, women’s beliefs about men, or women’s beliefs about women. We study these possibilities using novel primary survey data from more than 4, 000 low-income Pakistani households. Within households, we elicit each respondent’s own support for women’s work, second-order beliefs about community support, and the target woman’s labor-market behavior, comparing households within the same census block. We find that support for women’s work is widely underestimated, especially support among women, so communities are substantially more accepting than their members believe. The belief most strongly associated with a woman’s search and work history is her own perception of other women’s approval. Male household members’ beliefs matter mainly for women’s current employment status, consistent with their role in granting permission. The belief that appears most important is also correlated across generations along gender lines: mothers’ beliefs about women predict daughters’ beliefs about women. Evidence on mechanisms points most strongly to social learning about respectability rather than the anticipation of social sanctions from other women. |
| Keywords: | women working outside the home, social norms, misperceptions, second-order beliefs, pluralistic ignorance, peer effects, Pakistan |
| JEL: | J16 J22 D13 D83 O12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aiw:wpaper:50 |
| By: | Collins, Matthew; Guarnieri, Eleonora; Rainer, Helmut |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of free primary education (FPE) on parents’ fertility decisions in sub-Saharan Africa and how these effects depend on prevailing gender norms. Leveraging the staggered rollout of FPE across 17 countries and a within-ethnicity design, we find that the reform reduced completed fertility by 0.25 births per woman. Reduced fertility coincides with both improved child survival and school enrollment. Linking these data with ethnic-level cultural norms of male dominance, we show that these effects arise exclusively among groups with low male dominance. Consistent with fertility reductions increasing women’s autonomy, FPE also strengthens women’s outside options and intra-household bargaining power. In low male-dominance settings, this is reflected in higher divorce probabilities, lower acceptance of intimate partner violence, greater participation in household decisions, and increased media engagement — changes absent in high male-dominance cultures. A simple model embedding the quantity – quality tradeoff within a limited-commitment household bargaining framework, where gender norms determine women’s veto power over fertility, rationalizes these findings. Overall, the results underscore the central role of gender norms in shaping the effects of policy interventions on fertility and broader development outcomes. |
| JEL: | J13 I25 N37 Z1 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21135 |