In this issue we feature 13 current papers on the theme of social capital:

Access to full contents may be restricted. To subscribe/unsubscribe follow this link: http://lists.repec.org/mailman/options.

In this issue we have:

1. Religion, Discrimination and Trust - Chuah, Swee Hoon; Gächter, Simon; Hoffmann, Robert; Tan, Jonathan H. W.
2. Collusive Tax Evasion and Social Norms - Wrede, Matthias; Abraham, Martin; Lorek, Kerstin; Richter, Friedemann
3. Self-Reported Health and Gender: The Role of Social Norms - Caroli, Eve; Weber-Baghdiguian, Lexane
4. Do Taxes Crowd Out Intrinsic Motivation? Field-Experimental Evidence from Germany -Rincke, Johannes; Boyer, Pierre; Dwenger, Nadja
5. Trust in Procurement Interactions - Fugger, Nicolas; Katok, Elena; Wambach, Achim
6. Endogenous Social Interactions: Which Peers Matter? Tatsi, Eirini
7. Gender Differences in Altruism: Responses to a Natural Disaster - Lilley, Matthew; Slonim, Robert
8. The Importance of Peers for Compliance with Norms of Fair Sharing - Gächter, Simon; Gerhards, Leonie; Nosenzo, Daniele
9. Sleep Restriction and Time‐of‐Day Impacts on Simple Social Interaction - Dickinson, David L.; McElroy, Todd
10. Children's cooperation and discrimination in a bilingual province - Lergetporer, Philipp; Angerer, Silvia; Glätzle-Rützler, Daniela; Sutter, Matthias
11. Pocketbook voting and social preferences in referenda - Meya, Johannes; Poutvaara, Panu; Schwager, Robert
12. Does It Pay to Care? Prosocial Engagement and Employment Opportunities - Baert, Stijn; Vujić, Sunčica
13. Secularization, tax policy and prosocial behavior -  Bittschi, Benjamin; Borgloh, Sarah; Wigger, Berthold

 1. Religion, Discrimination and Trust

    Chuah, Swee Hoon (RMIT University)

    Gächter, Simon (University of Nottingham)

    Hoffmann, Robert (RMIT University)

    Tan, Jonathan H. W. (University of Nottingham)  We propose that religion impacts trust and trustworthiness in ways that  depend on how individuals are socially identified and connected. Religiosity  and religious affiliation may serve as markers for statistical  discrimination. Further, affiliation to the same religion may enhance group  identity, or affiliation irrespective of creed may lend social identity, and  in turn induce taste-based discrimination. Religiosity may also relate to  general prejudice. We test these hypotheses across three culturally diverse  countries. Participants' willingness to discriminate, beliefs of how  trustworthy or trusting others are, as well as actual trust and  trustworthiness are measured incentive compatibly. We find that interpersonal  similarity in religiosity and affiliation promote trust through beliefs of  reciprocity. Religious participants also believe that those belonging to some  faith are trustworthier, but invest more trust only in those of the same  religion – religiosity amplifies this effect. Across non-religious  categories, whereas more religious participants are more willing to  discriminate, less religious participants are as likely to display group  biases.

    Keywords: religiosity, connectedness, discrimination, trust, experiment

    JEL: C72 C91 J16 Z12

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9616&r=soc

 2. Collusive Tax Evasion and Social Norms

    Wrede, Matthias

    Abraham, Martin

    Lorek, Kerstin

    Richter, Friedemann

 Although collusive tax evasion by buyers and sellers of commodities and also  by employers and employees is widespread all over the world, it has rarely  been analyzed in the tax evasion literature. To fill this gap and to compare  collusive tax evasion with independent tax evasion, this paper develops a  simple non-cooperative game-theoretic model and confirms the model's  predictions in a laboratory experiment. Because collusive tax evasion  involves social interaction, this paper focuses on the effect of social norms  and theoretically and empirically demonstrates that the tax compliance norm  has a stronger negative effect on the magnitude of collusive tax evasion than  on independent tax evasion. The reason for this result is that in a collusive  tax evasion game with multiple equilibria social norms act as an equilibrium  selection device, whereas social norms need to be internalized to change the  behavior of taxpayers who evade taxes unobservedly.

    JEL: H26 A13 H29

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112859&r=soc

 3. Self-Reported Health and Gender: The Role of Social Norms

    Caroli, Eve (Université Paris-Dauphine)

    Weber-Baghdiguian, Lexane (Université Paris-Dauphine)  We investigate the role of social norms in accounting for differences in  self-reported health as reported by men and women. Using the European Working  Conditions Survey (EWCS, 2010), we first replicate the standard result that  women report worse health than men, whatever the health outcome we consider –  i.e. general self-assessed health but also more specific symptoms such as  skin problems, backache, muscular pain in upper and lower limbs, headache and  eyestrain, stomach ache, respiratory difficulties, depression and anxiety,  fatigue and insomnia. We then proxy social norms by the gender structure of  the workplace environment and study how the latter affects self-reported  health for men and women separately. Our findings indicate that individuals  in workplaces where women are a majority tend to report worse health than  individuals employed in male-dominated work environments, be they men or  women. These results are robust to controlling for a large array of working  condition indicators, which allows us to rule out that the poorer health  status reported by individuals working in female-dominated environments could  be due to worse job quality. We interpret this evidence as suggesting that  social norms associated with specific gender environments play an important  role in explaining differences in health-reporting behaviours across gender,  at least in the workplace.

    Keywords: health, gender, social norms, job quality

    JEL: I12 I19 J16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9670&r=soc

 4. Do Taxes Crowd Out Intrinsic Motivation? Field-Experimental Evidence from

     Germany

    Rincke, Johannes

    Boyer, Pierre

    Dwenger, Nadja

 This paper studies how imposing norms on contribution behavior affects  individuals' intrinsic motivation. We consider an urban area in Germany where  the Catholic Church collects a local church levy as a charitable donation,  despite the fact that the levy is legally a tax. In cooperation with the  church, we design a natural randomized field experiment with letter  treatments informing individuals that the church levy is in fact a tax.

 Guided by a simple theoretical model, we use baseline contribution behavior  to measure individuals' intrinsic motivation and demonstrate that treatment  effects differ strongly across motivational types. Among weakly intrinsically  motivated individuals, communicating the existence of a legal norm results in  a significant crowd-out of intrinsic motivation. In contrast, strongly  intrinsically motivated individuals do not show any treatment response. We  cross-validate our findings using alternative motivational measures derived  from an extensive post-treatment survey.

    JEL: C93 D03 H26

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112951&r=soc

 5. Trust in Procurement Interactions

    Fugger, Nicolas

    Katok, Elena

    Wambach, Achim

 We investigate the claim that auctions in procurement are detrimental to the

 buyer- seller relationship, which is expressed by less trust by the buyer and  more oppor- tunistic behavior by the supplier after the sourcing. To do so,  we compare exper- imentally a standard auction and a buyer-determined  auction. It turns out that buyer-determined auctions result in higher prices  but enable cooperation between the buyer and the selected supplier. In the  buyer-determined auction it can be optimal for the buyer to choose the larger  offer. The standard auctions, on the other hand, yield lower prices but  reduce cooperation to a minimum. Interest- ingly the degree of trust  reflected by a larger number of trades and efficiency in case of trade are  significantly higher in the buyer-determined auction. Theoretical reasoning  based on other-regarding preferences helps to organize the results.

    JEL: D44 D03 D02

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112907&r=soc

 6. Endogenous Social Interactions: Which Peers Matter?

    Tatsi, Eirini

 This paper compares endogenous social interactions models to determine which  one fits the classroom reality best. The analysis uses data from German  9th-graders and considers the effect of the best and worst peers scores, the  peers sum and peers average scores on own achievement. Although each model  seems plausible when estimated separately, comparison and a selection test  point to the classmates average model, meaning that group-based policies are  effective. The worst peers model comes second, followed by the best peers and  the sum of peers models. Examination of different-ability students responses  to increases of average peer achievement reveals either competition for the  first place or last-place aversion. Conditional on own course preferences,  own and peer characteristics, spillovers transmit only through cognitive  ability. Therefore, regrouping on the basis of characteristics such as  immigration background is obsolete. Policies should aim at low achievers in  small enough classrooms because only then single-student influences can  change the social norm. By improving the average through the worst, the best  become even brighter.

    JEL: C31 I20 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113168&r=soc

 7. Gender Differences in Altruism: Responses to a Natural Disaster

    Lilley, Matthew (Harvard University)

    Slonim, Robert (University of Sydney)  High-profile disasters can cause large spikes in philanthropy and  volunteerism. By providing temporary positive shocks to the altruism of  donors, these natural experiments help identify heterogeneity in the  distributions of the latent altruism which motivates donors. This study  examines gender heterogeneity of volunteer response by blood donors following  the most devastating Bushfires in Australia's history. Using difference in  differences analyses, we observe a sharp increase in blood donations after  the 2009 Victorian Bushfires. Several key features of this increase are  consistent with the predictions of a model where the distribution of latent  altruism has smaller variance among women than men. First, the highest  increase in donations occurs among previous non-donors, lapsed donors and  less frequent donors. Further, the increase in donations following the  Bushfires, compared to non-disaster periods, is substantially greater for  females than males; the proportional increase in the number of females  donating for the first time after the disaster is approximately twice the  proportional increase for men. Notably, this gender gap decreases with the  frequency with which people have previously donated.

    Keywords: gender, natural experiment, altruism

    JEL: D64 C93

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9657&r=soc

 8. The Importance of Peers for Compliance with Norms of Fair Sharing

    Gächter, Simon (University of Nottingham)

    Gerhards, Leonie (University of Hamburg)

    Nosenzo, Daniele (University of Nottingham)  A burgeoning literature in economics has started examining the role of social  norms in explaining economic behavior. Surprisingly, the vast majority of  this literature has studied social norms in asocial decision settings, where  individuals are observed to act in isolation from each other. In this paper  we use a large-scale dictator game experiment (N = 850) to show that the  presence of "peers" in the decision setting faced by an individual can have a  profound influence on the individual's perception of the decision situation  and its underlying norms of sharing, as elicited in an incentive compatible  way. However, we find limited evidence that this influence of peers in  normative considerations translates into a corresponding effect in actual  behavior. Partly, this is due to substantial heterogeneity in the extent to  which dictators in our sample are willing to comply with norms of fair  sharing.

    Keywords: social norms, norm compliance, peer effects, fair sharing,

     dictator game, framing, experiments

    JEL: A13 C92 D03

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9615&r=soc

 9. Sleep Restriction and Time‐of‐Day Impacts on Simple Social Interaction

    Dickinson, David L. (Appalachian State University)

    McElroy, Todd (Florida Gulf Coast University)  Simple bargaining games are the foundation of more complex social  interactions necessary for healthy relationships and well‐functioning  societies. Neuroscience research has shown that high‐level deliberative  thinking processes are necessary for social‐decision making - it seems  cognitively less demanding to be greedy or to mistrust. In this paper, our  focus is on how commonly‐experienced adverse sleep states, which are known to  harm deliberative thinking, impact outcomes in the classic simple bargaining  games (ultimatum, dictator, and trust games). Specifically, we experimentally  manipulate sleep states of 184 young‐adult subjects who took part in a 3 week  experimental protocol. Subjects were administered each game twice: once after  a full week of sleep restriction and once after a full week of well‐rested  sleep levels. Subjects were also randomly assigned to early morning (7:30 am)  or later evening (10:00 pm) sessions to manipulate the optimality of the  time‐of‐day of the decisions. We find a robust result of increased greed,  reduced trust, and reduced trustworthiness following sleep restriction, after  controlling for demographics and session indicators. We find no significant  direct impact of circadian timing on decisions for these tasks. However, the  mediating variable for these sleep manipulation effects is subjective  sleepiness, and both sleep restriction and suboptimal circadian timing  significantly increase self‐reported sleepiness. These results are consistent  with the hypothesis that increased sleepiness reduces the relative input of  deliberate thinking in social interactions.

    Keywords: sleep, time-of-day, ultimatum, dictator, trust, bargaining

    JEL: C7 C9

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9673&r=soc

10. Children's cooperation and discrimination in a bilingual province

    Lergetporer, Philipp

    Angerer, Silvia

    Glätzle-Rützler, Daniela

    Sutter, Matthias

 While discrimination and its economic implications have been studied in many  different societies and based on a multitude of attributes like ethnicity,  religion, gender, or language, the development of such behavior in children  is still poorly understood. Here we present experimental evidence from a  bilingual city in Northern Italy on whether the language spoken by a partner  in a prisoner s dilemma game affects behavior. We examine how discrimination  based on language develops in practically all six- to eleven-year old primary  school children in the city. We find that cooperation increases with age and  that both in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination emerge as children  get older.

    JEL: C93 D03 D64

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:112843&r=soc

11. Pocketbook voting and social preferences in referenda

    Meya, Johannes

    Poutvaara, Panu

    Schwager, Robert

 We study the role of self-interest and social preferences in referenda. Our  analysis is based on collective purchasing decisions of university students  on deep-discount flat-rate tickets for public transportation and culture.

 Individual usage data allows quantifying monetary benefits associated with  each ticket. We find that turnout is much higher among students who benefit a  lot from having a ticket, suggesting instrumental voting. In each referendum,  a majority votes in line with self-interest, providing strong evidence for  pocketbook voting. However, social preferences like altruism, public good  considerations and paternalism shift the vote of a sizeable minority against  their own financial interest.

    JEL: D72 H41 D64

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113120&r=soc

12. Does It Pay to Care? Prosocial Engagement and Employment Opportunities

    Baert, Stijn (Ghent University)

    Vujić, Sunčica (University of Antwerp)  We investigate whether, why and when prosocial engagement has a causal effect  on individual employment opportunities. To this end, a field experiment is  conducted in which volunteering activities are randomly assigned to  fictitious job applications sent to genuine vacancies. We find that  volunteers get one third more interview invitations than non‐volunteers. The  volunteering premium is higher for females but invariant with respect to the  number of engagements and the private versus public or nonprofit orientation  of the job posting firm. As a result, our findings are consistent with the  idea that prosocial workers sort themselves into non‐commercial sectors.

    Keywords: prosocial behaviour, volunteering, labour market, gender gaps,

     statistical discrimination, sorting, experiments

    JEL: C93 D64 J24 J71

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9649&r=soc

13. Secularization, tax policy and prosocial behavior

    Bittschi, Benjamin

    Borgloh, Sarah

    Wigger, Berthold

 Using German administrative income tax data we investigate economic  consequences of an increasingly secular society for prosocial behavior. For  this purpose, we establish initially a simple household model to formalize  the relationship between religious giving in form of the German church tax  and other tax deductible donations. We test the model hypotheses empirically  and compare how income and the tax-price of giving differ as incentives to  give between individuals leaving church and church members. While we find  evidence for crowding in between religious giving and other donations for  church members, we do not observe such a relation for church leavers.

 Moreover, donation behavior of church-leavers is much more responsive to tax  incentives of charitable giving compared to church members. Moreover, we find  that non-donors have a significantly increased probability of leaving church  compared to donors. We trace this results back to the fact that non-donors  are not able to compensate higher church taxes by reducing their donations.

    JEL: H24 H41 Z12

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc15:113065&r=soc

This nep-soc issue comes without any express or implied warranty. You may contact the editor by reply to this mail.

General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org.

For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at < director @ nep point repec point org >.