New Economics Papers - Social Norms and Social Capital - 05-07-2014

Date:

2014-06

By:

Arun G. Chandrasekhar
Cynthia Kinnan
Horacio Larreguy

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20259&r=soc [3]

Absence of well-functioning formal institutions leads to reliance on social networks to enforce informal contracts. Social ties may aid cooperation, but agents vary in network centrality, and this hierarchy may hinder cooperation. To assess the extent to which networks substitute for enforcement, we conducted high-stakes games across 34 Indian villages. We randomized subjects' partners and whether contracts were enforced to estimate how partners’ relative network position differentially matters across contracting environments. Socially close pairs cooperate even without enforcement; distant pairs do not. Pairs with unequal importance behave less cooperatively without enforcement. Thus capacity for cooperation depends on the underlying network.

JEL:

D03 D14 O16 Z13

Date:

2014-08

By:

Ulmer, Galadriele
Pallud, Jessie

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dau:papers:123456789/13586&r=soc [4]

Recent studies have emphasized the potential of Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) for companies. However, so far, researchers have paid little attention to usages and affordances of ESN. To investigate this research issue, we anchor our analysis on Leonardi’s Affordances Theory. A case study has been conducted in a large French company, where we conducted thirty-five interviews with users of an ESN. Content analysis of the interviews highlights multiple concepts related to affordances and sociomateriality. We identify both positive and negative affordances that guide, influence or constraint human action and determine the way in which social and material agencies work on each other. In comparison with traditional ICT, we argue that ESN require specific attention because ESN social features offer individuals new possibilities, new rules, and new modes of communication. Social agency is more than ever imbricated with material agency because of these social features.

Keywords:

Réseaux sociaux d'entreprise; Sociomateriality; Affordances; ESN; Appropriation;

JEL:

M15 Z13

Date:

2014-06-24

By:

Manant, Matthieu
Pajak, Serge
Soulié, Nicolas

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:56845&r=soc [5]

With the advance of online social networks, the screening of applicants during hiring can extend beyond the usual application material. Although browsing the online profile of an applicant raises ethical issues, this practice potentially improves the job matching, at virtually no cost to the employer. In this paper, we investigate the use of online social networks as a reliable source of information for recruiters on applicants in the French job market. We set up a field experiment using real accountant job offers in the greater Paris area. We adjust the content of Facebook accounts to manipulate the perceived origins of applicants (hometown and language spoken) and analyze the impact on the number of callbacks received from employers. The signal we manipulate to distinguish applicants is available only within the online profile, not the application material. During a 12 month period from March 2012 to March 2013, we submitted more than 800 applications. The test applicant received a third fewer callbacks compared to the control applicant, a significant difference. Our results suggest that online profiles are used indeed to screen applicants, and that this occurs early in the hiring process. During the course of the experiment, a change to the standard Facebook layout sent a part of our signal, namely the language spoken by the applicants, into a sub-tab not directly visible from the front page. This exogenous change (clicking on a tab is now required to access the information) allowed us to measure the recruiter's depth of search. In subsequent months, the gap between the two applicant types shrank and virtually disappeared. This suggests that screening is superficial, illustrating the existence of employer search costs for browsing an entire profile.

Keywords:

Online Social Network; Labor Market Discrimination; Privacy; Field experiment

JEL:

D82 D83 M5

Date:

2014-06-17

By:

Kurt A. Ackermann (Chair of Decision Theory and Behavioral Game Theory, ETH Zurich)
Eva Fleiß (Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research, Karl-Franzens-University Graz)
Jürgen Fleiß (Institute of Statistics and Operations Research, Karl-Franzens-University Graz)
Ryan O. Murphy (Chair of Decision Theory and Behavioral Game Theory, ETH Zurich)
Alfred Posch (Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research, Karl-Franzens-University Graz)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpsses:2014-02&r=soc [6]

The literature shows a significant correlation between people’s concerns for others and their concerns for the environment. However, these social and environmental considerations were commonly measured by means of attitude questionnaires that were not incentivized and did not readily facilitate a direct comparison of the results. In the present experiment, we employed a consistent incentivized method to assess subjects’ social value orientations (SVO) and their concerns for the environment and humanitarian aid. Subjects make real decisions with real consequences regarding the distribution of resources while the experimental design ensured comparability of subjects’ social preferences and their willingness to make tradeoffs for different environmental and social causes. We found that social and environmental value orientations are intertwined to some extent, but that the nature of the association is not simple. Nonetheless the results clearly show that people are generally willing to pay more for the benefit of people in need, compared to abstract environmental causes. We conclude that interventions to nudge people towards environment-friendly behavior may have a greater impact if human suffering as resulting from global warming is made salient.

Date:

2014-02-28

By:

Belik, Ivan (Dept. of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2014_008&r=soc [7]

In terms of social networks, split graphs correspond to the variety of interpersonal and intergroup relations. In this paper we analyse the interaction between the cliques (socially strong and trusty groups) and the independent sets (fragmented and non-connected groups of people) as the basic components of any split graph. Based on the Semi-Lagrangean relaxation for the k-cardinality assignment problem, we show the way of minimizing the socially risky interactions between the cliques and the independent sets within the social network.

Keywords:

Social networks; split graphs; k-cardinality assignment

JEL:

C00 C60 C61

Date:

2014-05-22

By:

Belik, Ivan (Dept. of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics)
Jörnsten, Kurt (Dept. of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2014_020&r=soc [8]

We construct the coauthorship network based on the scientific collaboration between the faculty members at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) and based on their international academic publication experience. The network structure is based on the NHH faculties’ publications recognized by the ISI Web of Science for the period 1950 – Spring, 2014. The given network covers the publication activities of the NHH faculty members (over six departments) based on the information retrieved from the ISI Web of Science in Spring, 2014. In this paper we analyse the constructed coauthorship network in different aspects of the theory of social networks analysis.

Keywords:

Coauthorship networks; social networks analysis

JEL:

Z13

Date:

2014

By:

Jaap J. A. Denissen
Hannah Ulferts
Oliver Lüdke
Peter M. Muck
Denis Gerstorf

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp657&r=soc [9]

Social norms are central to theoretical accounts of longitudinal person-environment transactions. On the one hand, individuals are thought to select themselves into social roles that fit their personality. On the other hand, it is assumed that individuals' personality is transformed by the socializing pressure of norm demands. These two transactional directions were investigated in a large and eterogeneous 5-year longitudinal subsample of job beginners (n = 640, M age = 21.24), job stayers (n = 4,137, M age = 46.63), and job changers (n= 2,854, M age = 44.68) from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Role demands were coded by both students and labor market experts. To demonstrate transactional effects, cross-lagged structural equation models were estimated. Substantial selection effects were found for both job beginners and job changers. There was also evidence for socialization effects, especially for participants who did not change jobs. Depending on the trait and the subsample that was investigated, selection effects were sometimes corresponsive with socialization effects. Personality role demands were temporally consistent across a four-year period even when individuals changed jobs (heterotypic continuity). This is one of the first empirical demonstrations of the transactional processes that lead to the formation of social niches.

Keywords:

Personality development, person-environment transactions, job characteristics, occupational roles, longitudinal study

Date:

2014-06

By:

Hauge, Karen Evelyn (Frisch Centre for Economic Research)
Brekke, Kjell Arne
Johansson, Lars-Olof (Department of Psychology)
Johansson-Stenman, Olof (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)
Svedsäter, Henrik

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0600&r=soc [10]

It has recently been argued that giving is spontaneous while greed is calculated (Rand et al. 2012). If greed is calculated we would expect that cognitive load, which is assumed to reduce the influence of cognitive processes, should affect greed. In this paper we study both charitable giving and the behavior of dictators under high and low cognitive load, to test if greed is affected by the load. In the dictator games we use both a give frame, where the dictators are given an amount that they may share with a partner, and a take frame, where dictators may take from an amount initially allocated to the partner. The results show consistently that the behavioral effect in terms of allocated money of the induced load is small if at all existent. At the same time, follow-up questions indicate that the subjects’ decisions are more driven by their feelings and less driven by their thoughts under cognitive load.

Keywords:

Cognitive load; Dictator games; Social preferences; Pro-social behavior; altruism

JEL:

C91 D64

Date:

2014-06

By:

Gebhard Kirchg�ssner

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cra:wpaper:2014-12&r=soc [11]

First the assumption of self-interest as applied in Economics is presented. Here we also discuss areas in which (many) people behave less self- but more other-regarding than traditional economic models assume. Then, greedy behaviour is considered as existing in the political and economic �world�. Here we refer to corruption as well as to the role of money as a positional good. We also discuss such behaviour in the academic world, in which money plays a role as well as reputation. Thus, while the assumption of mutually disinterested rationality is a very powerful instrument for analysing individual behaviour, to explain some phenomena we have to recognise that people are not only sometimes other-regarding, but also sometimes greedy, and that they might value money much more than traditional Economics assumes. We conclude with some remarks on what we can learn in this respect from Behavioural Economics.

Keywords:

Economic Model of Behaviour; Self-Interest; Altruism; Greed; Corruption

JEL:

B41

Date:

2014-07-04

By:

Ognedal, Tone (Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:osloec:2014_004&r=soc [12]

There is a growing interest in morale as a potential substitute for sanctions, encouraged by exerimental evidence that people's morale affect their economic decisions. I show that while morale may be a substitute for sanctions for each citizen, it is not a substitute in the market. In a model where employed and self-employed differ in their opportunities for tax evasion, I demonstrate that a higher fraction of tax compliant citizens may reduce social surplus and tax revenues. In contrast to sanctions, morale usually differ between individuals and this distorts the ranking of costs among sellers and willingness to pay among consumer. Tax evading sellers crowd out tax compliant sellers with higher productivity. Tax evading buyers crowd out tax compliant buyers with higher willingness to pay. As a result, improved tax morale may lead to less efficient production and exchange. Experiments show how sanctions crowd out morale in some settings. My paper points to the opposite problem in markets: Low sanctions may crowd out morale. While the paper explores the effects of tax morale only, the results apply to a wide range of areas where morale matters for peoples choices in he market, such as environmental and safety regulation.

Keywords:

Tax morale; Tax evasion; Norms; Sanctions

JEL:

D01 H26 K42

Date:

2014-06-27

By:

DiMaria, Charles Henri
Peroni, Chiara
Sarracino, Francesco

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:56983&r=soc [13]

This article is about the link between people’s subjective well-being, defined as an evaluation of one’s own life, and productivity. Our aim is to test the hypothesis that subjective well-being contributes to productivity using a two step approach: first, we establish whether subjective well-being can be a candidate variable to study Total Factor Productivity; second, we assess how much subjective well-being contributes to productivity at aggregate level through efficiency gains. We adopt Data Envelopment Analysis to compute total factor productivity and efficiency indices using European Social Survey and AMECO data for 20 European countries. Results show that subjective well-being is an input and not an output to production.

Keywords:

productivity, subjective well-being, TFP, efficiency gains, life satisfaction, economic growth, DEA.

JEL:

E23 I31 O47