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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2026–03–02
nine papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Grace E. Steward; Mario Macis; Nicola Lacetera; Jeffrey P. Kahn; Vikram S. Chib |
| Abstract: | We conducted a within-subject laboratory experiment in which participants decided whether to experience physical discomfort for charity, with or without additional personal compensation. Acceptance decreased with greater discomfort and increased with both larger charitable donations and personal payments. We show that private monetary incentives and prosocial benefits interact in a less-than-additive way: personal compensation raises participation but attenuates the marginal impact of charitable donations, making the combined impact of private and social rewards smaller than the sum of their separate effects. We also find suggestive evidence that the sequencing of compensated and uncompensated choices may change the responsiveness to charitable benefits. Overall, our results indicate that context, especially the presence (and timing) of private rewards, can affect the relationship between incentives and prosocial behavior. |
| Keywords: | prosocial behavior, incentives, altruism, motivation, decision-making |
| JEL: | C91 D64 D91 M52 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12433 |
| By: | Karsten Müller; Carlo Rasmus Schwarz; Zekai Shen |
| 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. |
| Keywords: | social media, content moderation, January 6th, election denial |
| JEL: | L82 J15 O33 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12485 |
| By: | Erica M. Field; Madeline McKelway; Alessandra Voena |
| Abstract: | Gender norms—shared expectations about appropriate behavior by gender—shape the outcomes of men and women across societies, and are correlated with GDP per capita. This chapter surveys the literature on gender norms and economic development, focusing on the pervasive and traditional ‘male breadwinner norm’ that assigns men to market work and women to domestic responsibilities. We review empirical approaches to measuring norms, including direct survey questions on attitudes, second-order beliefs about others' views, and behavioral proxies. Establishing causal effects of norms on behavior poses significant challenges, and we review a range of approaches to identify this link. We then present the leading hypotheses about the origins of gender norms in different forms of biological comparative advantage. We discuss societal forces sustaining norms, including self-reinforcing feedback between behavior and beliefs, other institutions, and backlash against norm violations. We highlight the bidirectional relationship between norms and development: economic growth can liberalize norms through structural transformation, legal reforms, and diffusion mechanisms, whereas talent misallocation stemming from gender norms may constrain growth. We conclude by discussing gender norms beyond the breadwinner domain, including norms around kinship, property, leadership, violence, mobility, sexuality, appearance, and behavior, and identify promising directions for future research. |
| JEL: | O10 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34832 |
| By: | Nauro Campos; Flavia Ginefra; Angelo Martelli; Alessio Terzi; Nauro F. Campos |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews research across economics, political economy, political science, and public policy to investigate how institutions shape the adoption, implementation, and durability of climate policies. We examine how formal institutions (i) coordinate implementation capacity, (ii) anchor long-term commitments, and (iii) mediate distributional conflict. We also discuss how informal institutions, such as social norms and trust, further condition whether formal mechanisms translate into durable action. We distinguish quasi-experimental evidence from correlational and case-based findings, identifying where economic methods could further sharpen evidence, and conclude with a research agenda focused on institutional interdependencies and the conditions under which institutions can facilitate the adoption of effective and irreversible climate policies. |
| Keywords: | climate change, institutions, political economy, climate governance |
| JEL: | D72 H11 P48 O43 O44 Q54 Q58 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12490 |
| By: | Ugo Antonio Troiano (Department of Economics, University of California Riverside) |
| Abstract: | About one-fourth of U.S. couples rely on a sole earner, typically male. Social norms may help sustain this pattern by stigmatizing men who stay at home. I develop a theoretical model showing that such stigma can generate gender gaps in employment and wages, even without other gender differences. I test the channel using a novel online dating experiment in which 500 participants evaluated profiles randomly assigned signals of willingness to prioritize family. Dating intentions toward stay-at-home men decline significantly. The decline is stronger among participants without tertiary education, consistent with the model’s predictions, suggesting a limited but targeted stigma. |
| Keywords: | gender, employment, online dating, stigma. |
| JEL: | C93 J12 J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucr:wpaper:202517 |
| By: | Jessen, Jonas; Schmitz, Sophia; Weinhardt, Felix |
| Abstract: | We study the local evolution of female labour supply and cultural norms in West Germany in reaction to the sudden presence of East Germans who migrated to the West after reunification. These migrants grew up with high rates of maternal employment, whereas West German families mostly followed the traditional breadwinner-housewife model. We find that West German women increase their labour supply and that this holds within households. We provide additional evidence on stated gender norms, West-East friendships, intermarriage and child care infrastructure. The dynamic evolution of the effects on labour supply is best explained by local cultural learnin |
| Keywords: | AAM requested |
| JEL: | D10 J16 J21 |
| Date: | 2024–04–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:124206 |
| By: | Giuseppe Attanasi (Sapienza University of Rome); Annamaria Nese (University of Salerno); Patrizia Sbriglia (Luigi Vanvitelli University of Campania); Luigi Senatore (University of Salerno) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we report the results of a field experiment conducted in Southern Italy in 2023, analysing the behavioural effects of earthquakes as far as trust, trustworthiness, and risk aversion are concerned. The experiments were conducted in an area where a disastrous earthquake occurred in 1980 within the Campania region. Our working hypotheses aim at testing whether there are long-term effects of an earthquake. The experimental design comprised two treatments. For the first treatment, we recruited subjects living in towns close to the earthquake epicentre that had experienced significant damage from the disaster. For the second treatment, we recruited subjects living in towns with similar socio-economic characteristics but located far from the epicentre. Our results indicate that subjects who experienced the earthquake and its aftermath are more willing to trust, reciprocate kindness, and are more risk-averse than subjects in the alternative treatment. Overall, our results shed new light on the long-term effects of catastrophes and bear relevant implications for public and health policies. |
| Keywords: | Field Experiments, Environmental Disasters, Trust, Risk Aversion |
| JEL: | C90 C91 C93 D15 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ahy:wpaper:wp67 |
| By: | Aysajan Eziz |
| Abstract: | Autonomous AI agents are beginning to populate social platforms, but it is still unclear whether they can sustain the back-and-forth needed for extended coordination. We study Moltbook, an AI-agent social network, using a first-week snapshot and introduce interaction half-life: how quickly a comment's chance of receiving a direct reply fades as the comment ages. Across tens of thousands of commented threads, Moltbook discussions are dominated by first-layer reactions rather than extended chains. Most comments never receive a direct reply, reciprocal back-and-forth is rare, and when replies do occur they arrive almost immediately -- typically within seconds -- implying persistence on the order of minutes rather than hours. Moltbook is often described as running on an approximately four-hour ``heartbeat'' check-in schedule; using aggregate spectral tests on the longest contiguous activity window, we do not detect a reliable four-hour rhythm in this snapshot, consistent with jittered or out-of-phase individual schedules. A contemporaneous Reddit baseline analyzed with the same estimators shows substantially deeper threads and much longer reply persistence. Overall, early agent social interaction on Moltbook fits a ``fast response or silence'' regime, suggesting that sustained multi-step coordination will likely require explicit memory, thread resurfacing, and re-entry scaffolds. |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2602.07667 |
| By: | Dominik Suri (University of Bonn); Simon Gächter (University of Nottingham); Sebastian Kube (University of Bonn) |
| Abstract: | AI-driven systems are rapidly moving from decision support to directing human behavior through rules, recommendations, and compliance requests. This shift expands everyday human–AI interaction and raises the possibility that AI may function as an authority figure. However, the behavioral consequences of AI as an authority figure remain poorly understood. We investigate whether individuals differ in their willingness to comply with arbitrary rules depending on whether these rules are attributed to an AI agent (ChatGPT) or to a fellow human. In a between-subject design, 977 US Prolific users completed the coins task: they could earn a monetary payoff by stopping the disappearance of coins at any time, but a rule instructed them to wait for a signal before doing so. There are no conventional reasons to follow this rule: complying is costly and nobody is harmed by non-compliance. Despite this, we find high rule-following rates: 64.3% followed the rule set by ChatGPT and 63.9% complied with the human-set rule.Descriptive and normative beliefs about rule following, aswell as compliance conditional on these beliefs, are also largely unaffected by the rule’s origin. However, subjective social closeness to the rule setter significantly predicts how participants condition their behavior on social expectations: when participants perceive the rule setter as subjectively closer, conditional compliance is higher and associated beliefs are stronger, irrespective of whether the rule setter is human or AI. |
| Keywords: | Artificial intelligence, AI-human interaction, ChatGPT, rule-following, coins task, CRISP framework, social expectations, conditional rule conformity, social closeness, IOS11, online experiments. |
| JEL: | C91 D91 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:391 |