In this issue we feature 8 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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In this issue we have:

1. Do People Who Care About Others Cooperate More? Experimental Evidence from Relative Incentive Pay - Pablo Hernandez; Dylan Minor; Dana Sisak
2. That's just - not fair: Gender differences in notions of justice - Becker, Nicole; Häger, Kirsten; Heufer, Jan
3. Language and intergroup discrimination. Evidence from an experiment - Dominique Cappelletti; Luigi Mittone; Matteo Ploner
4. Social Networks and Maternal Health Care Utilisation in Tanzania - Alfred K. Mukong and Justine Burns
5. Equality Concerns and the Limits of Self-Governance in Heterogeneous Populations - Gangadharan, Lata; Nikiforakis, Nikos; Villeval, Marie Claire
6. Competitive pricing strategies in social networks - Chen, Ying-Ju; Zenou, Yves; Zhou, Junjie
7. Intergenerational Correlations of Extreme Right-Wing Party Preferences and Attitudes toward Immigration - Avdeenko, Alexandra; Siedler, Thomas
8. Some Causes are More Equal than Others? Behavioral Spillovers in Charitable Giving - Ek, Claes

1. Do People Who Care About Others Cooperate More? Experimental Evidence from Relative Incentive Pay

   Pablo Hernandez (New York University AD)

   Dylan Minor (Harvard Business School, Strategy Unit)

   Dana Sisak (Erasmus University Rotterdam)  We experimentally study ways in which the social preferences of individuals  and groups affect performance when faced with relative incentives. We also  identify the mediating role that communication and leadership play in  generating these effects. We find other-regarding workers tend to depress  efforts by 15% on average. However, selfish workers are nearly three times  more likely to lead workers to coordinate on minimal efforts when  communication is possible. Hence, the other-regarding composition of a team  of workers has complex consequences for organizational performance.

   Keywords: Social Preferences, Relative Performance, Collusion, Leadership

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hbs:wpaper:16-040&r=soc

2. That's just - not fair: Gender differences in notions of justice

   Becker, Nicole

   Häger, Kirsten

   Heufer, Jan

 In Becker et al. (2013a,b), we proposed a theory to explain giving behaviour  in dictator experiments by a combination of selfishness and a notion of  justice. The theory was tested using dictator, social planner, and veil of  ignorance experiments. Here we analyse gender differences in preferences for  giving and notions of justice in experiments using the same data. Similar to  Andreoni and Vesterlund (2001), we find some differences in giving behaviour.

 We find even stronger differences in the notion of justice between men and  women; women tend to be far more egalitarian. Using our preference  decomposition approach from Becker et al. (2013a) and parametric estimates,  we show that differences in the giving behaviour between men and women in  dictator experiments are explained by differences in their notion of justice  and not by different levels of selfishness. We employ both parametric and  non-parametric techniques, and both methods confirm the result.

 In Becker et al. (2013a,b) haben wir eine Theorie eingeführt, die das  Verhalten in Diktatorspielen als Kombination aus Eigennutz und  Gerechtigkeitsvorstellung erklärt. Die Theorie wurde mit Diktatorspielen,  Sozialer-Planer-Spielen, und Schleier-der-Ignoranz-Spielen getestet. Hier  analysieren wir jetzt Geschlechterunterschiede in den Präferenzen für das  Abgeben von Geld und den Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen in Experimenten mit den  selben Daten. Ähnlich wie bei Andreoni und Vesterlund (2001) finden wir  einige Unterschiede im Verhalten beim Abgeben von Geld. Die Unterschiede in  den Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen zwischen Männern und Frauen sind noch

 deutlicher: Frauen tendieren erheblich stärker zu Egalitarismus. Mit unserem  Ansatz zur Zerlegung von Präferenzen aus Becker et al. (2013a) und  parametrischen Schätzungen zeigen wir, dass Unterschiede im Verhalten beim  Abgeben von Geld zwischen Männern und Frauen in Diktatorspielen durch  Unterschiede in den Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen erklärt werden können, aber  nicht durch unterschiedliche Grade an Eigennutz. Wir nutzen sowohl  parametrische als auch nicht-parametrische Ansätze, welche beide das Ergebnis  bestätigen.

   Keywords: altruism,dictator games,distribution,experimental

    economics,gender differences,justice,social preferences

   JEL: C91 D12 D61 D63 D64 J16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:578&r=soc

3. Language and intergroup discrimination. Evidence from an experiment

   Dominique Cappelletti

   Luigi Mittone

   Matteo Ploner

 Language is one of the most salient dimensions of ethnocultural identity and  clearly marks who is and who is not a member of the group. We conduct an  experiment to investigate the role of language in intergroup discrimination  in the creation of social capital, here operationalised as a measure  encompassing trust, trustworthiness, cooperation, and coordination. We  observe the behaviour of the members of a minority language community when  they receive the instructions written in their own idiomatic language and  when they receive them written in the surrounding language. We find a  language effect on behaviour, but this effect is gender specific. When  deciding in the surrounding language, participants do not treat ingroup and  outgroup members differently. When deciding in their own idiomatic language,  females show intergroup discrimination and treat ingroup members more  favourably compared to how they treat them when deciding in the surrounding  language. We also observe that the behaviour participants exhibit in the  experiment positively correlates with their attitudes as measured by the  standard trust survey question used as a proxy for social capital.

   Keywords: language, intergroup discrimination, social capital, experiment

   JEL: C9

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trn:utwpce:1504&r=soc

4. Social Networks and Maternal Health Care Utilisation in Tanzania

   Alfred K. Mukong and Justine Burns

 Social networks are increasingly being recognised as having an important  influence on the health market outcomes, as they facilitate the exchange of  information on health care related issues. Networks reduce search costs by  providing information to peers about the appropriate health care providers  and details about the functioning of the health care system. In this paper,  we examine the impact of information externalities generated through network  membership on maternal health care utilisation in Tanzania. We further  propose new approaches for quantifying the size of one's network. We adopt an  econometric approach that minimises the problems of omitted variable bias.

 Using the Demographic and Health Survey data for Tanzania, a country  characterised by low levels of maternal health care utilisation we find that  social networks may enhance antenatal completion and early antenatal check-up  probabilities by an additional 6-35 percent and sometimes up to 59 percent.

 The results suggest that failure to adequately control for omitted variables  would lead to substantial under-estimation of the network eect. Finally, we  show that irrespective of the measure of the size of the networks, high  qualitynetworks have better outcomes than low quality networks.

   Keywords: Maternal Healthcare, Social Networks, Tanzania

   JEL: I11 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rza:wpaper:540&r=soc

5. Equality Concerns and the Limits of Self-Governance in Heterogeneous Populations

   Gangadharan, Lata (Monash University)

   Nikiforakis, Nikos (New York University, Abu Dhabi)

   Villeval, Marie Claire (CNRS, GATE)

 Mechanisms to overcome social dilemmas provide incentives to maximize  efficiency. However, often – such as when agents are heterogeneous – there is  a trade-off between efficiency and equality. Agents' concerns for equality in  such instances can limit the ability of mechanisms to promote efficiency. We  provide evidence for this from a public good experiment using a simple  mechanism which allows individuals to communicate periodically with other  group members and reward them for their actions. We show that, in homogeneous  populations – where there is no tension between efficiency and equality – the  mechanism permits group to obtain maximum efficiency. This is not the case in  heterogeneous populations where individuals derive different benefits from  cooperation. Although almost all heterogeneous groups agree to follow  specific contribution rules with positive contributions, most of them either  prioritize equality over efficiency or strike a compromise between the two.

 These findings suggest that equality concerns can impose limits on the  ability of heterogeneous populations to reach efficient outcomes through  self-governance.

   Keywords: communication, rewards, cooperation, normative conflict,

    heterogeneity

   JEL: C92 H41 D74

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9384&r=soc

6. Competitive pricing strategies in social networks

   Chen, Ying-Ju

   Zenou, Yves

   Zhou, Junjie

 We study pricing strategies of competing firms who sell heterogeneous  products to a group of customers in a social network. Goods are substitutes  and each customer gains network externalities from her neighbors who consume  the same products. We show that there is a unique subgame-perfect equilibrium  where, first, firms choose the prices of each good for each consumer, and,  then, individuals decide their consumption of the goods. We also fully  characterize the equilibrium prices for any network structure, and relate  these equilibrium outcomes to the familiar Katz-Bonacich network centrality  measures. Contrary to the monopoly case, the equilibrium price of a customer  not only depends on her own characteristics but also on others'

 characteristics. We show that firms price discriminate and charge lower  prices to more central consumers. This means that more central consumers  obtain a larger discount because of their impact in terms of consumption on  their neighbors. We also show that the firms' equilibrium profits can  decrease when either the network becomes denser or network effects are higher.

   Keywords: competition; differentiated products; pricing; social networks

   JEL: D43 D85 L13 L14

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10857&r=soc

7. Intergenerational Correlations of Extreme Right-Wing Party Preferences and Attitudes toward Immigration

   Avdeenko, Alexandra (University of Mannheim)

   Siedler, Thomas (University of Hamburg)  This study analyzes the importance of parental socialization on the  development of children's far right-wing preferences and attitudes towards  immigration. Using longitudinal data from Germany, our intergenerational  estimates suggest that the strongest and most important predictor for young  people's right-wing extremism are parents' right-wing extremist attitudes.

 While intergenerational associations in attitudes towards immigration are  equally high for sons and daughters, we find a positive intergenerational  transmission of right-wing extremist party affinity for sons, but not for  daughters. Compared to the intergenerational correlation of other party  affinities, the high association between fathers' and sons' right-wing  extremist attitudes is particularly striking.

   Keywords: political preferences, extremism, gender differences,

    longitudinal data, intergenerational links

   JEL: C23 D72 J62 P16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9356&r=soc

8. Some Causes are More Equal than Others? Behavioral Spillovers in Charitable Giving

   Ek, Claes (Department of Economics, Lund University)  People can often contribute to prosocial causes by several means; for  instance, environmentally friendly activities include sorting household  waste, buying organic products, and donating to NGOs. Policy to encourage  prosocial behavior is sometimes directed only towards a particular activity,  however, and such policies may give rise to `behavioral spillovers',  affecting efforts on other prosocial activities. We examine such spillovers  in the lab. In a version of the dictator game, experimental subjects could  donate to two different real-world charities, and to simulate  activity-specific policy, the relative productivity of the charities varied.

 We hypothesize, first, that an increase in the productivity of one charity  will `crowd out' contributions to the other charity. Second, we introduce  several treatments to test whether crowding occurs even across (possibly

 very) dissimilar alternatives. Crowding-out occurs significantly in all  cases, but the effect is systematically weaker, the more dissimilar are the  charity alternatives. In our most dissimilar treatment, it is only half as  large as when alternatives are very similar.

   Keywords: charitable giving; dictator game; public goods; prosocial behavior

   JEL: C91 D03 H41

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2015_029&r=soc

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