In this issue we feature 11 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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In this issue we have:

1. Networks in the Diaspora - Gil S. Epstein; Odelia Heizler (Cohen)
2. Immigrants, Trust and Social Traps - Marini, Annalisa
3. Cultural Beliefs, Values and Economics: A Survey - Marini, Annalisa
4. Social Contacts, Dutch Language Proficiency and Immigrant Economic Performance in the Netherlands: A Longitudinal Study - Chiswick, Barry R.; Wang, Zhiling
5. Autonomy, Social Interactions and Culture - Marini, Annalisa; Navarra, Pietro
6. Cooperation, Motivation and Social Balance - Bosworth, Steven; Singer, Tania; Snower, Dennis J.
7. Referrals: peer screening and enforcement in a consumer credit field experiment - Gharad Bryan; Dean Karlan; Jonathan Zinman
8. Small-world conservatives and rigid liberals : attitudes towards sharing in self-proclaimed left and right - Thomsson K.M.; Vostroknutov A.
9. Overcoming Coordination Failure in a Critical Mass Game: Strategic Motives and Action Disclosure - Aidas Masiliunas
10. Heterogeneous intergenerational altruism - Antony Millner
11. Social Norms, Labor Market Opportunities, and the Marriage Gap for Skilled Women - Marianne Bertrand; Patricia Cortés; Claudia Olivetti; Jessica Pan

 1. Networks in the Diaspora

    Gil S. Epstein (Bar-Ilan University)

    Odelia Heizler (Cohen) (Tel-Aviv-Yaffo Academic College)  In this paper, we examine possible types of network formation among  immigrants in the diaspora and between those immigrants and the locals in  different countries. We present the model by considering different possible  interactions between immigrants and the new society in their host country.

 Spread of migrants from the same origin in the diaspora may well increase  international trade between the different countries, depending on the types  of networks formed. We present possible applications of network structure on  the country of origin, such as on international trade. We find that when the  size of the diaspora is sufficiently large, the natives in the different  countries will be willing to bear the linking cost with the immigrants  because the possible benefits increase with increasing size of the diaspora.

    Keywords: Immigrants, Networks, Diaspora

    JEL: D85 D74 J61 L14

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:1604&r=soc

 2. Immigrants, Trust and Social Traps

    Marini, Annalisa

 The paper estimates a social interactions model to study the impact of  culture on US immigrants' decisions. Findings vary by group of immigrants and  by type of social interactions and they are robust to both additional checks  and sensitivity analysis. The paper contributes to the literature as follows.

 It first estimates a social interactions model that models both group  formation and the formation of social interactions. Besides, since this is an  observational learning model policy suggestions may be drawn to favor  integration of immigrants. Finally, it provides a new empirical strategy to  study the impact of both inherited and contemporaneous culture on individual  decisions.

    Keywords: Social Interactions, Culture, Sequential Logit, Simulations

    JEL: C1 C31 Z1

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:69627&r=soc

 3. Cultural Beliefs, Values and Economics: A Survey

    Marini, Annalisa

 The present work reviews the relation between culture and economics; in doing  so, we often distinguish between the historical component of culture (i.e.

 inherited values) and its contemporaneous component (i.e. social  interactions). First, the paper emphasizes which cultural traits are relevant  in economics, reviews situations where culture affects economic outcomes and  addresses the relevance of culture across time and space. Then, it explains  the theoretical framework of reference for the transmission of both  contemporaneous and inherited culture. Finally, it presents econometric  techniques available to the researchers and suitable to investigate the  impact of culture on economic outcomes, providing suggestions for future  research.

    Keywords: Contemporaneous Culture, Inherited Culture, Cultural Econometrics

    JEL: C0 Z1

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:69747&r=soc

 4. Social Contacts, Dutch Language Proficiency and Immigrant Economic

     Performance in the Netherlands: A Longitudinal Study

    Chiswick, Barry R. (George Washington University)

    Wang, Zhiling (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)  Using longitudinal data on immigrants in the Netherlands for the years 1991,  1994, 1998, 2002, we examined the impacts of social contacts and Dutch  language proficiency on adult foreign-born men's earnings, employment and  occupational status. The main conclusions are as follows. On average, social  contacts and a good mastery of the Dutch language enhance immigrants' economic performances. The effects are stronger for immigrants with  low-skill-transferability than for immigrants with  high-skill-transferability, and are stronger for economic migrants than for  non-economic migrants. Contact with Dutch people and Dutch organisations  unambiguously enhances all aspects of immigrants' economic performance,  however, we found no evidence for the positive effect of co-ethnic contact on  employment status.

    Keywords: social capital, Dutch language proficiency, labour market

     performance, Dutch immigrants, skill transferability

    JEL: J15 J61 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9760&r=soc

 5. Autonomy, Social Interactions and Culture

    Marini, Annalisa

    Navarra, Pietro

 The present paper, using a social interactions model, studies the impact of  culture on autonomy of immigrants. The results suggest that: (i) immigrants' autonomy is largely influenced by the autonomy of individuals living in a  host country; (ii) some immigrants are better off in countries and regions  with better institutional environments. The results are robust to sensitivity  checks. The contributions of the paper are as follows. First, we estimate a  social interactions model that models both the formation of social  interactions and the sorting of individuals to study the impact of culture on  individual autonomy. Second, we estimate a model that analyzes the impact of  both confidence in the individual and collective culture on individuals' decisions. Finally, since this is an observational learning model, policy  suggestions may be drawn from the analysis.

    Keywords: Autonomy, Social Interactions and Culture

    JEL: C3 Z1

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:69757&r=soc

 6. Cooperation, Motivation and Social Balance

    Bosworth, Steven

    Singer, Tania

    Snower, Dennis J.

 This paper examines the reflexive interplay between individual decisions and  social forces to analyze the evolution of cooperation in the presence of  "multi-directedness", whereby people's preferences depend on their  psychological motives. People have access to multiple, discrete motives.

 Different motives may be activated by different social settings.

 Inter-individual differences in dispositional types affect the responsiveness  of people's motives to their social settings. The evolution of these  dispositional types is driven by changes in the frequencies of social  settings. In this context, economic policies can influence economic decisions  not merely by modifying incentives operating through given preferences, but  also by influencing people's motives (thereby changing their preferences) and  by changing the distribution of dispositional types in the population  (thereby changing their motivational responsiveness to social settings).

    Keywords: Cooperation; Dispositions; Endogenous preferences; motivation;

     Reflexivity; Social dilemma

    JEL: A13 C72 D01 D03 D62 D64

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11131&r=soc

 7. Referrals: peer screening and enforcement in a consumer credit field experiment

    Gharad Bryan

    Dean Karlan

    Jonathan Zinman

 Empirical evidence on peer intermediation lags behind many years of lending  practice and a large body of theory in which lenders use peers to mitigate  adverse selection and moral hazard. Using a simple referral incentive  mechanism under individual liability, we develop and implement a two-stage  field experiment that permits separate identification of peer screening and  enforcement effects. We allow for borrower heterogeneity in both ex-ante  repayment type and ex-post susceptibility to social pressure. Our key  contribution is how we deal with the interaction between these two sources of  asymmetric information. Our method allows us to identify selection on the  likelihood of repayment, selection on the susceptibility to social pressure,  and loan enforcement. We estimate peer effects on loan repayment in our  setting, and find no evidence of screening (albeit with an imprecisely  estimated zero) and large effects on enforcement. We then discuss the  potential utility and portability of the methodological innovation, for both  science and for practice.

    JEL: C93 D12 D14 D82 O12 O16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:59009&r=soc

 8. Small-world conservatives and rigid liberals : attitudes towards sharing in self-proclaimed left and right

    Thomsson K.M.

    Vostroknutov A. (GSBE)

 We experimentally explore the way political preferences shape giving  behavior. We find no difference in average giving between the Left and the  Right in a Dictator game environment. However, we find the reasons for giving  to be different. Right-leaning individuals give according to a norm-dependent  utility that takes into account the beliefs of the receiver. The behavior of  left-leaning individuals is not shaped by such an interaction between norms  and beliefs. We conclude that right-wingers choose in accordance with a small  world view, where giving is shaped by social interaction, while left-wingers  appear rigid in their reaction to social context.

    Keywords: Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual; Design of

     Experiments: Laboratory, Group Behavior; Behavioral Economics: Underlying

     Principles; Altruism; Philanthropy;

    JEL: C91 C92 D03 D64

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:umagsb:2016008&r=soc

 9. Overcoming Coordination Failure in a Critical Mass Game: Strategic Motives and Action Disclosure

    Aidas Masiliunas (Aix-Marseille University (Aix-Marseille School of

     Economics), CNRS & EHESS)

 We study whether coordination failure is more often overcome if players can  easily disclose their actions. In an experiment subjects first choose their  action and then choose whether to disclose this action to other group  members, and disclosure costs are varied between treatments. We find that no  group overcomes coordination failure when action disclosure costs are high,  but half of the groups do so when the costs are low. Simulations with a  belief learning model can predict which groups will overcome coordination  failure, but only if it is assumed that players are either farsighted,  risk-seeking or pro-social. To distinguish between these explanations we  collected additional data on individual preferences and the degree of  farsightedness. We find that in the low cost treatment players classified as  more farsighted more often deviate from an inefficient convention and  disclose this action, while the effect of risk and social preferences is not  significant.

    Keywords: lock-in, coordination failure, learning, strategic teaching, information, collective action, critical mass

    JEL: C72 C92 D83

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1609&r=soc

10. Heterogeneous intergenerational altruism

    Antony Millner

 Agents exhibit pure intergenerational altruism if they care not just about  the consumption utility experienced by future generations, but about their  total wellbeing. If all generations are altruistic, each generation’s  wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of its descendants. Thus pure  intergenerational altruism causes generations’ preferences to be  interdependent. While existing models study the relationship between pure  intergenerational altruism and conventional time preferences, they assume  that altruistic preferences are homogeneous across society. In effect, agents  impose their own preferences on future generations, whether they share them  or not. By contrast, we study pure intergenerational altruism when agents’  preferences are heterogeneous and fully non-paternalistic, i.e. they evaluate  the wellbeing of future agents according to their own sovereign  intergenerational preferences. We demonstrate that homogeneous models of  intergenerational altruism over (under) estimate the weight an agent places  on future utilities if she is less (more) altruistic than average. Moreover,  all non-paternalistic agents agree on the appropriate long-run utility  discount rate, regardless of their preferences. In general, existing  derivations of exponential or quasi-hyperbolic time preferences from  homogeneous models of pure intergenerational altruism are not robust to  heterogeneity.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lsg:lsgwps:wp226&r=soc

11. Social Norms, Labor Market Opportunities, and the Marriage Gap for Skilled  Women

    Marianne Bertrand (Booth School of Business, University of Chicago)

    Patricia Cortés (Questrom School of Business, Boston University)

    Claudia Olivetti (Boston College)

    Jessica Pan (National University of Singapore)  In most of the developed world, skilled women marry at a lower rate than  unskilled women. We document heterogeneity across countries in how the  marriage gap for skilled women has evolved over time. As labor market  opportunities for women have improved, the marriage gap has been growing in  some countries but shrinking in others. We discuss a theoretical model in  which the (negative) social attitudes towards working women might contribute  towards the lower marriage rate of skilled women, and might also induce a  non-linear relationship between their labor market prospects and their  marriage outcomes. The model is suited to understand the dynamics of the  marriage gap for skilled women over time within a country with set social  attitudes towards working women. The model also delivers predictions about  how the marriage gap for skilled women should react to changes in their labor  market opportunities across countries with more or less conservative  attitudes towards working women. We test the key predictions of this model in  a panel of 23 developed countries, as well as in a panel of US states.

    Keywords: Marriage, Social Norms, Gender

    JEL: J11 J12 J16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:902&r=soc

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