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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2026–06–08
nine papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Irmert, Natalie (Department of Economics, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether cultural gender norms about occupations, defined as a society’s perception of what is appropriate work for men and women, contribute to persistent gender-stereotypical occupational choice. Using large-scale international survey data and high-quality administrative records, I study whether second-generation immigrant men (women) are less likely to work in an occupation that is perceived as female (male)-typical work in their country of ancestry. I find robust evidence that men, but not women, adhere to occupation-specific cultural gender norms: men are less likely to work in an occupation that is perceived as female work in their country of ancestry, while there is no such effect for women. To investigate mechanisms behind this result, I design an international survey experiment. The results corroborate the gender asymmetry found in the observational data and reveal a social perception penalty for men in heavily female-dominated occupations, but no comparable consistent penalty for women in male-dominated fields. Taken together, the findings of this paper suggest that persistent social norms are a key factor behind the slow integration of men into female-dominated occupations. |
| Keywords: | occupational choice; social norms; epidemiological approach |
| JEL: | J16 J24 J62 |
| Date: | 2026–05–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2026_005 |
| By: | Diya Abraham (Department of Economics, University of Reading); Ondrej Krcal (Department of Economics, Masaryk University, Brno) |
| Abstract: | We investigate how workers’ motivation is influenced by whether they feel trusted or not by managers. In a laboratory experiment, responsibility for a manager’s earnings is divided unequally between two workers. We vary whether this decision is made by the manager or a random device on the manager’s behalf. Importantly, having more/less responsibility does not affect the workers’ wages. Despite this, we find that workers provide less effort when they are deliberately, vs. randomly, assigned lower responsibility. We find a smaller, less robust positive effect of learning one is more trusted. We examine two inter-related mechanisms and show that both beliefs about expected effort as well as emotions triggered when learning about the manager’s decision help explain our results. |
| Keywords: | trust, vulnerability, motivation, social comparison |
| JEL: | C90 D23 D91 J53 |
| Date: | 2026–05–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2026-03 |
| By: | Lucas Braga de Melo; Valdemar Pinho Neto |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the economic returns to political connections in Brazilian local elections, focusing not only on traditional campaign donations but also on two novel channels: firms that provide goods or services to candidates during campaigns and firms’ owners affiliated with parties within a coalition running for mayor. Employing regression discontinuity and event study methods around close mayoral races, we find that politically connected firms substantially increase both their likelihood of securing procurement contracts and the value of those contracts, though without corresponding gains in employment or wages. This paper contributes to the literature on political connections by documenting the emergence of indirect political connections and public procurement allocation in a context of weak institutional constraints. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notnic:2026-01 |
| By: | Serena Canaan, Pierre Mouganie, Ali Abboud, Samuel Bazzi, Antoine Deeb (Simon Fraser University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how authority figures in higher education shape gender norms over the long run. We exploit the random assignment of first-year students to faculty advisors at an elite university in the Middle East and combine administrative records with an alumni survey measuring gender attitudes up to 24 years later. Women assigned to female advisors adopt more egalitarian views about politics and work, while men become more conservative. These effects are strongest among religious students and in male-dominated STEM fields, where female authority is especially counter stereotypical. The effects may persist through reinforcement, as women assigned to female advisors later sort toward female instructors and more gender-themed courses. Our results do not appear to be driven by generic exposure to successful women. Instead, they point to a distinct role for authority in transmitting gender norms: randomized exposure to high-achieving female peers has little effect, while the largest impacts come from senior and high-value-added female advisors. A simple framework combining belief updating and identity-based status threat helps explain these patterns of female empowerment and male backlash. More broadly, our findings reveal a progress paradox whereby gains in female representation in elite authority expand opportunities for women while intensifying backlash among men, thereby deepening gender polarization. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sfu:sfudps:dp26-09 |
| By: | Luca Braghieri (Bocconi University); Peter Schwardmann (Carnegie Mellon University); Egon Tripodi (Hertie School) |
| Abstract: | We conduct an experiment that engages U.S. Democrats and Republicans in video conversations about policy-relevant facts. We study self-selection into conversations and their effect on information aggregation and affective polarization. Participants prefer co-partisan conversations, believing cross-partisan conversations to be less informative and less pleasant. There is more to learn from counter-partisans, but participants find it harder to extract knowledge from them. Our rich audiovisual data reveal that co- and cross-partisan conversations are strikingly similar in content and tone. Yet, knowledge extraction is impeded by participants' persistent lack of trust in the knowledge of counter-partisans. In contrast, cross-partisan interactions prove more enjoyable than anticipated and significantly reduce affective polarization, an effect that persists in an obfuscated follow-up survey three months later. More emotionally engaged conversations produce larger reductions in affective polarization. Policies encouraging cross-partisan interactions may be more successful at reducing affective polarization than at promoting information aggregation. |
| Keywords: | cross-partisan interactions; partisan sorting; echo chambers; information diffusion; affective polarization; misperceptions; |
| JEL: | C93 D83 D9 |
| Date: | 2026–06–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:575 |
| By: | Obregon Diaz, Carlos Federico |
| Abstract: | This paper develops the Economics of Belonging as a structural extension of the capability approach. It proposes that capabilities are not primary units of analysis but outcomes of institutional belonging, defined as effective participation within institutional structures. The analysis integrates institutional economics, social choice theory, mechanism design, and game theory to demonstrate that aggregation from individual states is structurally infeasible under incomplete information and multiple equilibria. A dynamic framework is developed in which belonging drives effective demand and sustained economic growth through middle-class expansion. The paper contributes to development theory by providing a unified institutional and relational framework linking participation, demand, and long-term growth. |
| Keywords: | Economics of Belonging; Institutions; Effective Demand; Economic Development; Social Choice; Game Theory; Middle Class |
| JEL: | B41 D02 O11 O43 |
| Date: | 2026–04–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:128817 |
| By: | Avichai (Department of Economics Bar-Ilan University); Dudi (Department of Economics Bar-Ilan University); Dian (Alvarez College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio); Haipeng (Allan) (Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa); Daniel (Department of Economics Emory University, ICEA, ISET at TSU, and RCEA) |
| Abstract: | We use survey experiments to demonstrate that manipulating participants’ perceptions of the context can affect their decisions. We ran three survey experiments in the U.S. and Israel with participants from both economics and non-economics majors. In the experiments, participants face a tradeoff between profit maximization (market norm) and workers’ welfare (social norm). Our experimental setup enables us to discriminate between the self-selection and indoctrination effects. Existing studies find that economics and noneconomics students make different choices in such situations, which the studies argue is because of differences in personality traits between economics students and others. While such differences might exist, we argue that context also plays an important role. Using priming to manipulate the context, we demonstrate that when participants receive cues signaling that their decision has an economic context, both economics and non-economics students tend to maximize profits. When participants receive cues emphasizing social norms, on the other hand, both economics and non-economics students are less likely to maximize profits. We find that the role of context in determining behavior is at least as large as the baseline differences between economics and non-economics students. |
| Keywords: | Market Norms, Social Norms, Selection, Indoctrination, Self-Interest, Economic Man, Rational Choice, Fairness, Experimental Economics, Laboratory Experiments, Priming, Economists vs. Non-Economists |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tbs:wpaper:2026-01 |
| By: | Bradley, Jake (University of Nottingham); Albornoz, Facundo (University of Nottingham); Sonderegger, Silvia (University of Nottingham); Rodriguez, Jesus (University of Nottingham); Rustagi, Devesh (University of Warwick) |
| Abstract: | There are concerns over the rise in populism and hate crimes targeting minorities in democracies. We examine whether national information shocks triggered by political events play a role. Focusing on two UK events that revealed nationwide anti-immigrant sentiment, we document counterintuitive results: large persistent surges in hate crimes in the post-event periods in areas with pro-immigrant, rather than anti-immigrant, attitudes. We show that the xenophobic minority residing in pro-immigrant areas experience stronger belief shocks from these events, inducing them to update their beliefs about social acceptability of hate. Our findings highlight how heterogeneous priors interact with national events to amplify xenophobic behavior |
| Keywords: | Information shocks, attitudes towards immigrants, hate crimes, United Kingdom JEL codes: C72, D80, P0 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1611 |
| By: | Francesca Asja Trento; Andrea Melillo; Mounu Prem; Luigi Pascali |
| Abstract: | What role did the Republic of Letters play in Europe's transition to sustained innovation? We combine a corpus of digitized correspondence within the Republic of Letters with European aristocratic genealogies, historical postal routes, and a database of notable individuals to trace the diffusion and consequences of Enlightenment correspondence between 1600 and 1850. We first show that the Republic spread, in part, through aristocratic kinship networks: aristocrats connected to already participating peers entered earlier, and their probability of entry declined sharply with network distance. To isolate a causal channel, we exploit changes in postal distances along pre-existing kinship paths to already-inoculated aristocrats, while controlling directly for local postal access. We then aggregate this variation to European grid cells and estimate the effect of exposure to the Republic on the rise of applied science, innovation, and economic activity. Cells instrumented into the Republic experienced a near- doubling in applied scientists and inventors roughly three decades after first contact, with no pretrends and effects concentrated in scientific and technical correspondence rather than religion or philosophy. These findings suggest that the Republic of Letters helped reshape the geography of innovation before industrialization. |
| Keywords: | economic growth, Enlightenment, innovation, Republic of Letters, social networks, The Great Divergence, useful knowledge |
| JEL: | N13 O31 O33 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bge:wpaper:1579 |