In this issue we feature 12 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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In this issue we have:

1. Other-regarding Preferences, Group Identity and Political Participation: An Experiment - Pedro Robalo; Arthur Schram; Joep Sonnemans

  2. Strong intrinsic motivation - Dessi, Roberta; Ristichini, Aldo

   3. Social Relations, Incentives, and Gender in the Workplace - Okemena Onemu

  4. Superstars need Social Benefits: An Experiment on Network Formation - Boris van Leeuwen; Theo Offerman; Arthur Schram

  5. Forbidden Fruits: The Political Economy of Science, Religion, and Growth - Roland Bénabou; Davide Ticchi; Andrea Vindigni

  6. Ethnic Diversity and Team Performance: A Field Experiment - Sander Hoogendoorn; Mirjam van Praag

  7. Socio-cultural Diversity and Urban Buzz - Daniel Arribas-Bel; Karima Kourtit; Peter Nijkamp

  8. Social coordination with locally observable types - Ennio Bilancini; Leonardo Boncinelli

  9. Social Network Effects and Green Consumerism - Dominic Hauck; Erik Ansink; Jetske Bouma; Daan van Soest

 10. Can Violence Harm Cooperation? Experimental Evidence - De Luca, Giacomo; Sekeris, Petros; Spengler, Dominic

 11. The effects of social media on cognitive development in undergraduate economics students - Ling Ting and Naiefa Rashied

 12. Diffusion of Behavior in Network Games Orchestrated by Social Learning - Jia-Ping Huang; Maurice Koster; Ines Lindner

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  1. Other-regarding Preferences, Group Identity and Political Participation: An Experiment

 

    Pedro Robalo (CREED, University of Amsterdam)

 

    Arthur Schram (CREED, University of Amsterdam)

 

    Joep Sonnemans (CREED, University of Amsterdam)  We experimentally study the relationship between other-regarding preferences,  group identity and political participation. In doing so, we propose a novel  group identity induction procedure that succeeds in creating environments  where in-group bias is either high or low. At the individual level, we find  that both altruistic subjects and group identifiers participate above  average. The most competitive subjects participate much less often than other  types, while the most altruistic subjects manage to sustain high  participation levels. At the aggregate level, we observe only few  statistically significant differences between environments where group  identity is high and low. This suggests that the higher participation  observed in field settings for close-knit (political) groups might be due to  underlying mobilization processes rather than a heightened sense of  group-belonging.

 

    Keywords: Group identity, Other-regarding preferences, Political participation, Participation Game, Experiment

 

    JEL: A13 C91 C92 D72

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20130079&r=soc

 

 2. Strong intrinsic motivation

 

    Dessi, Roberta

 

    Ristichini, Aldo

 

 A large literature in psychology, and more recently in economics, has argued  that monetary rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation. We investigate whether  the negative impact persists when intrinsic motivation is strong, and test  this hypothesis experimentally focusing on the motivation to undertake  interesting and challenging tasks, informative about individual ability. We  find that this type of task can generate strong intrinsic motivation, that is  impervious to the effect of monetary incentives, particularly when the  individual is "racing against himself". In our experiments, monetary  incentives have no significant impact on performance. In a second experiment  using the same kind of task but a setting designed to weaken intrinsic  motivation, monetary incentives do have a significant, positive, effect on  performance. This result confirms that our experimental setup may, with  appropriate conditions, replicate the known crowding out effects.

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:29269&r=soc

 

 3. Social Relations, Incentives, and Gender in the Workplace

 

    Okemena Onemu (Erasmus University Rotterdam)  Gender differences in preferences regarding social relationships and  competitive environments are well documented in psychology and economics.

 

 Research also shows that social relationships and competition among  co-workers are affected by the incentive schemes workers are exposed to. We  combine these two stylized facts and hypothesize that men and women differ in  how they rate their co-worker relationships when they work under individual  incentives, group incentives, or a combination of the two. This hypothesis is  explored using survey data on 14,743 highly educated employees from 78  different organizations in the Netherlands. We find correlational evidence  that, in the absence of individual incentives, group incentives improve  co-worker relationships for women, but deteriorate co-worker relationships  for men.

 

    Keywords: Incentives, gender differences, interpersonal relations, social interaction

 

    JEL: J3 M52

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20140009&r=soc

 

 4. Superstars need Social Benefits: An Experiment on Network Formation

 

    Boris van Leeuwen (University of Amsterdam)

 

    Theo Offerman (University of Amsterdam)

 

    Arthur Schram (University of Amsterdam)  We investigate contributions to the provision of public goods on a network  when efficient provision requires the formation of a star network. We provide  a theoretical analysis and study behavior in a controlled laboratory  experiment. In a 2x2 design, we examine the effects of group size and the  presence of (social) benefits for incoming links. We find that social  benefits are highly important. They facilitate convergence to equilibrium  networks and enhance the stability and efficiency of the outcome. Moreover,  in large groups social benefits encourage the formation of superstars: star  networks in which the core contributes more than expected in the stage-game  equilibrium. We show that this result is predicted by a repeated game  equilibrium.

 

    Keywords: Network formation, networked public goods, peer production, social benefits, open source software

 

    JEL: C91 D85 H41

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20130112&r=soc

 

 5. Forbidden Fruits: The Political Economy of Science, Religion, and Growth

 

    Roland Bénabou

 

    Davide Ticchi

 

    Andrea Vindigni

 

 We analyze the joint dynamics of religious beliefs, scientific progress and  coalitional politics along both religious and economic lines. History offers  many examples of the recurring tensions between science and organized  religion, but as part of the paper's motivating evidence we also uncover a  new fact: in both international and cross-state U.S. data, there is a  significant and robust negative relationship between religiosity and patents  per capita. The political-economy model we develop has three main features:

 

 (i) the recurrent arrival of scientific discoveries that generate  productivity gains but sometimes erode religious beliefs; (ii) a government,  endogenously in power, that can allow such innovations to spread or instead  censor them; (iii) a religious organization or sector that may invest in  adapting the doctrine to new knowledge. Three long-term outcomes emerge.

 

 First, a "Secularization" or "Western-European" regime with declining  religiosity, unimpeded science, a passive Church and high levels of taxes and  transfers. Second, a "Theocratic" regime with knowledge stagnation, extreme  religiosity with no modernization effort, and high public spending on  religious public goods. In-between is a third, "American" regime that  generally (not always) combines scientific progress and stable religiosity  within a range where religious institutions engage in doctrinal adaptation.

 

 It features low overall taxes, together with fiscal advantages or societal  laws benefiting religious citizens. Rising income inequality can, however,  lead some of the rich to form a successful Religious-Right alliance with the  religious poor and start blocking belief-eroding discoveries and ideas.

 

    JEL: E02 H11 H41 N0 O3 O43 P16 Z1 Z12

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21105&r=soc

 

 6. Ethnic Diversity and Team Performance: A Field Experiment

 

    Sander Hoogendoorn (University of Amsterdam)

 

    Mirjam van Praag (University of Amsterdam)  One of the most salient and relevant dimensions of team heterogeneity is  ethnicity. We measure the impact of ethnic diversity on the performance of  business teams using a field experiment. We follow 550 students who set up 45  real companies as part of their curriculum in an international business  program in the Netherlands. We exploit the fact that companies are set up in  realistic though similar circumstances and that we, as outside researchers,  had the unique opportunity to exogenously vary the ethnic composition of  otherwise randomly composed teams. The student population consists of 55%  students with a non-Dutch ethnicity from 53 different countries of origin,  enabling us to include extremely diverse teams in our study. We find that a  moderate level of ethnic diversity has no effect on team performance in terms  of business outcomes (sales, prots and prots per share). However, if at least  the majority of team members is ethnically diverse then more ethnic diversity  seems to affect the performance of teams positively. Our data suggest that  this positive effect might be related to the more diverse pool of relevant  knowledge facilitating (mutual) learning within ethnically diverse teams.

 

    Keywords: Ethnic diversity, team performance, field experiment, entrepreneurship, (mutual) learning

 

    JEL: J15 L25 C93 L26 M13 D83

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20120068&r=soc

 

 7. Socio-cultural Diversity and Urban Buzz

 

    Daniel Arribas-Bel (VU University Amsterdam)

 

    Karima Kourtit (VU University Amsterdam)

 

    Peter Nijkamp (VU University Amsterdam)  Cities have become playing grounds for competitive behaviour and rapid  economic dynamics. But in many cities (or urban agglomerations) economic  growth is mainly manifested in specific geographic areas, where creative  people and innovative entrepreneurs are located. This paper offers first the  foundation for analysing the so-called 'urban buzz' and its interlinked  primary drivers. The paper will next develop an analytical framework for  testing the buzz hypothesis, with a special reference to the importance of  social networks in Amsterdam. In our empirical analysis, we use a unique data  set on social network connectivity and spatial concentration in a city, based  on location-sharing services through the use of Foursquare. Our urban buzz  model shows clearly that buzz and socio-economic (cultural) diversity are  closely connected phenomena.

 

    Keywords: cultural diversity, urban buzz, agglomeration, creativity, piazza, spatial dependence, social networks

 

    JEL: R1

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20130110&r=soc

 

 

 8. Social coordination with locally observable types

 

    Ennio Bilancini

 

    Leonardo Boncinelli

 

 In this paper we study the typical dilemma of social coordination between a

 

 risk- dominant convention and a payoff-dominant convention. In particular, we  consider a model where a population of agents play a coordination game over  time, choosing both the action and the network of agents with whom to  interact. The main novelty with respect to the existing literature is that:

 

 (i) agents come in two distinct types, (ii) the interaction with a di.erent  type is costly, and (iii) an agent's type is unobservable prior to  interaction. We show that when the cost of interacting with a different type  is small with respect to the payo. of coordination, then the payoff-dominant  convention is the only stochastically stable convention; instead, when the  cost of interacting with a different type is large, the only stochastically  stable conventions are those where all agents of one type play the  payoff-dominant action and all agents of the other type play the  risk-dominant action.

 

    Keywords: coordination, equilibrium selection, stochastic stability,

 

     learning, network formation

 

    JEL: C73 D83

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mod:recent:108&r=soc

 

 9. Social Network Effects and Green Consumerism

 

    Dominic Hauck (VU University Amsterdam)

 

    Erik Ansink (VU University Amsterdam)

 

    Jetske Bouma (PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency)

 

    Daan van Soest (Tilburg University)

 

 One of the drivers of green consumerism are social network externalities that  are associated with buying 'green' because green consumerism is fashionable,  or because of reputation effects. We analyze how the strength of this social  network effect impacts green consumerism, environmental externalities and  total welfare. We discuss a model where products are differentiated according  to their environmental quality, where the production of green products  generates positive externalities to all, and where those consumers purchasing  a green product variety receive the additional benefits of being a member of  the network of green consumers. Depending on the strength of the social  network effect, we show that (a) firms may produce lower quality, (b) the  market may generate fewer positive environmental externalities, and (c) total  welfare may deteriorate. The main policy implication is that if there is a  network effect, regulators should choose a stricter minimum environmental  quality standard.

 

    Keywords: Quality Differentiation, Social Network Effect, Minimum

 

     Environmental Quality Standard

 

    JEL: D11 L15 Q31

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20140150&r=soc

 

 

10. Can Violence Harm Cooperation? Experimental Evidence

 

    De Luca, Giacomo

 

    Sekeris, Petros

 

    Spengler, Dominic

 

 While folk theorems for dynamic renewable common pool resource games sustain  cooperation as an equilibrium, the possibility of reverting to violence to  appropriate the resource destroys the incentives to cooperate, because of the  expectation of conflict when resources are sufficiently depleted. In this  paper, we provide experimental evidence that individuals behave according to  the theoretical predictions. For high stocks of resources, when conflict is a  highly costly activity, participants cooperate less than in the control  group, and they play the non-cooperative action with higher frequency. This  comes as a consequence of the (correct) anticipation that, when resources run  low, the conflict option is used by a large share of participants.

 

    Keywords: Experiment, Dynamic Game, Cooperation

 

    JEL: C72 C73 C91 D74

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:63697&r=soc

 

 

11. The effects of social media on cognitive development in undergraduate economics students

 

    Ling Ting and Naiefa Rashied

 

 The study attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of social media on cognitive  development among undergraduate economics students at a South African  university. The study collects data on student postings to discussion topics  posted on Facebook and Twitter. The use of 3 well-known rubrics for  evaluating cognitive development: Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2001),  revised Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001), and Greenlaw and Deloach  (2003), are used. Results indicate that student posts fall mainly into lower  levels of thinking suggesting that social media may not be effective in  cultivating critical thinking. Moreover, these results shed light on the  voluntary versus mandatory nature of participation, the time length for  student responses, and “big think†style questions in a developing country  context (i.e. poor internet).

 

    Keywords: Social media, teaching and learning, critical thinking

 

    JEL: A20 A22

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rza:wpaper:513&r=soc

 

 

12. Diffusion of Behavior in Network Games Orchestrated by Social Learning

 

    Jia-Ping Huang (VU University Amsterdam)

 

    Maurice Koster (University of Amsterdam)

 

    Ines Lindner (VU University Amsterdam)  The novelty of our model is to combine models of collective action on  networks with models of social learning. Agents are connected according to an  undirected graph, the social network, and have the choice between two

 

 actions: either to adopt a new behavior or technology or stay with the  default behavior. The individual believed return depends on how many  neighbors an agent has, how many of those neighbors already adopted the new  behavior and some agent-specic cost-benefit parameter. There are four main  insights of our model: (1) A variety of collective adoption behaviors is  determined by the network. (2) Average inclination governs collective  adoption behavior. (3) Initial inclinations determine the critical mass of  adoption which ensures the new behavior to prevail. (4) Equilibria and  dynamic be- havior changes as we change the underlying network and other  parameters. Given the complexity of the system we use a standard technique  for estimating the solution.

 

    Keywords: Diffusion, Social Networks, Social Learning, Tipping, Technology

 

     Adoption

 

    JEL: C72 C73 D83 D85 O33

 

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20130208&r=soc

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