In this issue we feature 17 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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In this issue we have:

1. The Economic Consequences of Social Network Structure - Jackson, Matthew O.; Rogers, Brian; Zenou, Yves
2. Networks and the macroeconomy: an empirical exploration - Acemoglu, Daron; Akcigit, Ufuk; Kerr, William R.
3. Estimating Social Preferences and Gift Exchange at Work - Stefano DellaVigna; John A. List; Ulrike Malmendier; Gautam Rao
4. Signaling cooperation - Heinz, Matthias; Schumacher, Heiner
5. Does Trust Matter for Entrepreneurship: Evidence from A Cross-Section of Countries - Oasis Kodila-Tedika; Julius A. Agbor
6. Social capital and debt contracting: evidence from bank loans and public bonds - Hasan, Iftekhar; Hoi, Chun-Keung (Stan); Wu, Qiang; Zhang, Hao
7. Gender-specific Reference-dependent Preferences in an Experimental Trust Game - Hiromasa Takahashi; Junyi Shen; Kazuhito Ogawa
8. Partners in Crime: Schools, Neighborhoods and the Formation of Criminal Networks - Stephen B. Billings; David J. Deming; Stephen L. Ross
9. The Natural Resource Curse Revisited:Theory and Evidence from India - Dhillon, Amrita; Krishnan, Pramila; Patnam, Manasa; Perroni, Carlo
10. Election, Implementation, and Social Capital in SchoolBased Management: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment on the COGES Project in Burkina Faso - Sawada, Yasuyuki; Aida, Takeshi; Griffen, Andrew S; Kozuka, Eiji; Noguchi, Haruko; Todo, Yasuyuki
11. "Peer Effects on Vaccination: Experimental Evidence from Rural Nigeria" - RyokoSato; Yoshito Takasaki
12. The Sensitive Nature of Social Trust to Intelligence - Oasis Kodila-Tedika; Simplice Asongu; Florentin Azia-Dimbu
13. The not so Gentle Push: Behavioral Spillovers and Policy Instruments - Giovanna d’Adda; Valerio Capraro; Massimo Tavoni
14. Does Fundraising Create New Giving? Jonathan Meer
15. Social Media in Virtual Marketing - Jalees, Tariq; Tariq, Huma; Zaman, Syed Imran; Alam Kazmi, Syed Hasnain
16. Constructing Social Division to Support Cooperation - Choy, James P.
17. Homo moralis: Personal characteristics, institutions, and moral decision-making - Deckers, Thomas; Falk, Armin; Kosse, Fabian; Szech, Nora

 1. The Economic Consequences of Social Network Structure

    Jackson, Matthew O. (Stanford University)

    Rogers, Brian (Washington University)

    Zenou, Yves (Monash University,, Department of Economics,)  We survey the literature on the economic consequences of the structure of  social networks. We develop a taxonomy of `macro' and `micro' characteristics  of social interaction networks and discuss both the theoretical and empirical  findings concerning the role of those characteristics in determining  learning, diffusion, decisions, and resulting behaviors. We also discuss the  challenges of accounting for the endogeneity of networks in assessing the  relationship between the patterns of interactions and behaviors.

    Keywords: Social networks; Social economics; Homophily; Diffusion; Social

     learning contagion; Centrality measures; Endogeneity; Network formation

    JEL: C72 D85 L14 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1116&r=soc

 2. Networks and the macroeconomy: an empirical exploration

    Acemoglu, Daron

    Akcigit, Ufuk

    Kerr, William R.

 The propagation of macroeconomic shocks through input-output and geographic  networks can be a powerful driver of macroeconomic fluctuations. We first  exposit that in the presence of Cobb-Douglas production functions and  consumer preferences, there is a specific pattern of economic transmission  whereby demand-side shocks propagate upstream (to input-supplying industries)  and supply-side shocks propagate downstream (to customer industries) and that  there is a tight relationship between the direct impact of a shock and the  magnitudes of the downstream and the upstream indirect effects. We then  investigate the short-run propagation of four different types of  industry-level shocks: two demand-side ones (the exogenous component of the  variation in industry imports from China and changes in federal spending) and  two supply-side ones (TFP shocks and variation in knowledge/ideas coming from  foreign patenting). In each case, we find substantial propagation of these  shocks through the input-output network, with a pattern broadly consistent  with theory. Quantitatively, the network-based propagation is larger than the  direct effects of the shocks. We also show quantitatively large effects from  the geographic network, capturing the fact that the local propagation of a  shock to an industry will fall more heavily on other industries that tend to  collocate with it across local markets. Our results suggest that the  transmission of various di¤erent types of shocks through economic networks  and industry interlinkages could have first-order implications for the  macroeconomy.

    Keywords: economic fluctuations, geographic collocation, input-output

     linkages, networks, propagation, shocks

    JEL: E32

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bof:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201512101464&r=soc

 3. Estimating Social Preferences and Gift Exchange at Work

    Stefano DellaVigna

    John A. List

    Ulrike Malmendier

    Gautam Rao

 We design a model-based field experiment to estimate the nature and magnitude  of workers’ social preferences towards their employers. We hire 446 workers  for a one-time task. Within worker, we vary (i) piece rates; (ii) whether the  work has payoffs only for the worker, or also for the employer; and (iii) the  return to the employer. We then introduce a surprise increase or decrease in  pay (‘gifts’) from the employer. We find that workers have substantial  baseline social preferences towards their employers, even in the absence of  repeated-game incentives. Consistent with models of warm glow or social  norms, but not of pure altruism, workers exert substantially more effort when  their work is consequential to their employer, but are insensitive to the  precise return to the employer. Turning to reciprocity, we find little  evidence of a response to unexpected positive (or negative) gifts from the  employer. Our structural estimates of the social preferences suggest that, if  anything, positive reciprocity in response to monetary ‘gifts’ may be larger  than negative reciprocity. We revisit the results of previous field  experiments on gift exchange using our model and derive a one-parameter  expression for the implied reciprocity in these experiments.

    JEL: C93 D64

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22043&r=soc

 4. Signaling cooperation

    Heinz, Matthias

    Schumacher, Heiner

 We examine what an applicant´s vita signals to potential employers about her  willingness to cooperate in teams. Intensive social engagement may credibly  reveal that an applicant cares about the well-being of others and therefore  is less likely to free-ride in teamwork situations. We find that  contributions in a public goods game strongly increase in a subject´s degree  of social engagement as indicated on her résumé (and rated by an independent  third party). Engagement in other domains, such as student or sports  associations, is not positively correlated with contributions. In a  prediction experiment with human resource managers from various industries,  we find that managers use résumé content effectively to predict relative  differences in subjects´ willingness to cooperate. Thus, young professionals  signal important behavioral characteristics to potential employers through  the choice of their extracurricular activities.

    Keywords: signaling,public goods,labor markets,extracurricular activities

    JEL: C72 C92 D82

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:safewp:120&r=soc

 5. Does Trust Matter for Entrepreneurship: Evidence from A Cross-Section of Countries

    Oasis Kodila-Tedika (Université de Kinshasa Département d’Eco)

    Julius A. Agbor (Stellenbosch University)  Differences in trust levels between countries explain the observed  discrepancies in entrepreneurial spirit amongst them. We test this hypothesis  with a cross-section of 60 countries in 2010. Our findings suggest that about  half of the variation in entrepreneurial spirit across countries in the world  is driven by trust considerations. This result is robust to regional  clustering, to outliers and to alternative conditioning variables. The  findings of the study suggest that while formal incentives to nurture  entrepreneurship must be maintained, policy-makers should also seek to pay  attention to the role of trust cultivated through informal networks.

    Keywords: trust, institution, entrepreneurship

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:agd:wpaper:15/057&r=soc

 6. Social capital and debt contracting: evidence from bank loans and public bonds

    Hasan, Iftekhar

    Hoi, Chun-Keung (Stan)

    Wu, Qiang

    Zhang, Hao

 We find that firms headquartered in U.S. counties with higher levels of  social capital incur lower bank loan spreads. This finding is robust to using  organ donation as an alternative social-capital measure and incremental to  the effects of religiosity, corporate social responsibility, and tax  avoidance. We identify the causal relation using companies with a  social-capital-changing headquarter relocation. We also find that  high-social-capital firms face loosened nonprice loan terms, incur lower  at-issue bond spreads, and prefer bonds over loans. We conclude that debt  holders perceive social capital as providing environmental pressure  constraining opportunistic firm behaviors in debt contracting.

    Keywords: social capital, cooperative norm, moral hazard, cost of bank

     loans, public bonds

    JEL: G21 G32 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bof:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201511201442&r=soc

 7. Gender-specific Reference-dependent Preferences in an Experimental Trust Game

    Hiromasa Takahashi (Faculty of International Studies, Hiroshima City University)

    Junyi Shen (Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration

     (RIEB), Kobe University, Japan)

    Kazuhito Ogawa (Faculty of Sociology and Center for Experimental

     Economics, Kansai University)

 We examine gender-specific reference-dependent preferences in a trust game  experiment. Different participation fees and one question eliciting subjects' reference points were used to categorize subjects into three frames: the gain  frame, gain or loss frame, and loss frame. We find that (i) men are  risk-seeking in both the gain and the loss frame; (ii) women are not always  more risk-averse than men; and (iii) women display other-regarding  preferences only when they are in the gain frame. These results demonstrate  the importance of taking account of both gender differences and  reference-dependent preferences when examining individuals' economic behavior.

    Keywords: Reference-dependent preference, Gender difference, Trust game

     experiment, Risk preference, Other-regarding preference

    JEL: C72 C91

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2016-09&r=soc

 8. Partners in Crime: Schools, Neighborhoods and the Formation of Criminal Networks

    Stephen B. Billings (University of North Carolina-Charlotte)

    David J. Deming (Harvard University)

    Stephen L. Ross (University of Connecticut)  Why do crime rates differ greatly across neighborhoods and schools? Comparing  youth who were assigned to opposite sides of newly drawn school boundaries,  we show that concentrating disadvantaged youth together in the same schools  and neighborhoods increases total crime. We then show that these youth are  more likely to be arrested for committing crimes together – to be “partners  in crime”. Our results suggest that direct peer interaction is a key  mechanism for social multipliers in criminal behavior. As a result, policies  that increase residential and school segregation will – all else equal –  increase crime through the formation of denser criminal networks.

    Keywords: Youth Crime, Schools, Criminal Partnerships, Neighborhood

     Effects, Social Interactions

    JEL: I2 J1 K4 R2

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2016-03&r=soc

 9. The Natural Resource Curse Revisited:Theory and Evidence from India

    Dhillon, Amrita (Kings College and CAGE, University of Warwick)

    Krishnan, Pramila (University of Cambridge and CEPR)

    Patnam, Manasa (CREST-ENSAE)

    Perroni, Carlo (University of Warwick)  I construct a model of religion as an institution that provides community  enforcement of contracts within families. Family altruism implies that family  members cannot commit to reporting broken contracts to the community, so the  community must monitor contract performance as well as in icting punishment.

 The community has less information than family members, and so community  monitoring is ine cient. I provide evidence from a study of Amish  institutions, including qualitative evidence from sociological accounts and  quantitative evidence from a novel dataset covering nearly the entire Amish  population of Holmes county, Ohio. I nd that 1) Amish households are not  unitary, 2) the Amish community helps to support families by in icting  punishments on wayward family members, 3) without the community Amish people  have di culty committing to punishing family members, and 4) Amish community  membership strengthens family ties, while otherwise similar religious  communities in which there is less need for exchange between family members  have rules that weaken family ties. My model has implications for  understanding selection into religious practice and the persistence of  culture.

    Keywords: Natural Resource Curse, Political Secession JEL Classification:

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:268&r=soc

10. Election, Implementation, and Social Capital in SchoolBased Management:

     Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment on the COGES Project in Burkina Faso

    Sawada, Yasuyuki

    Aida, Takeshi

    Griffen, Andrew S

    Kozuka, Eiji

    Noguchi, Haruko

    Todo, Yasuyuki

 In this paper, we investigate the role of School Management Committees (COGES) in Burkina Faso. These committees include elected members of each  community, and are tasked with setting and implementing annual school plans.

 The study adopted a hybrid evaluation method incorporating a randomized  controlled trial and a large-scale artefactual field experiment a la Levitt  and List (2007) on public goods with monetary rewards, to closely examine  unexplored issues impacting on the sustainability of community-driven  projects, and to identify at least partially the mechanisms of this  sustainability. We found that the COGES project significantly increased  social capital in the form of voluntary contributions to public goods,  especially by linking those that people can be connected to vertically. On  average, the direct increase in voluntary contributions to public goods from  the implementation of the COGES project was between 8.0 and 10.2%. For groups  composed of school principals, teachers, and parents, the average  contribution increased by between 12.7 and 24.1% through the democratic  election of school management committee members, and by between 11.0 and  17.2% through the implementation of the COGES project. These results suggest  that community management projects can improve local cost recovery by  increasing local contributions of public goods, potentially leading to better  fiscal sustainability in community-driven projects. Moreover, the results  based on our hybrid experiments are largely in line with real-world decisions  observed in the schools under our investigation. As a byproduct, our findings  are supportive of models of other-regarding preferences.

    Keywords: school-based management , randomized controlled trials ,

     artefactual field experiments , public goods game , social capital ,

     sustainability of development project

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jic:wpaper:192&r=soc

11. "Peer Effects on Vaccination: Experimental Evidence from Rural Nigeria"

    RyokoSato (Global Asia Institute, National University of Singapore)

    Yoshito Takasaki (Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo)  Understanding how and why social interactions matter for people's vaccination  behavior is important for disease control. This paper conducts the first  causal analysis of peer effects on vaccination in developing countries. We  created exogenous variations in peers' vaccination behaviors by randomizing  cash incentives for tetanus vaccine take-up among Nigerian women. Vaccine  take-up among friends strongly increased women's take-up; having a friend  getting vaccinated increases the likelihood that one receives a vaccination  by 18.9 percentage points. The peer effects among friends are heterogeneous  by one's belief about vaccine safety and access to health clinics in a way  that is consistent with whether or not a woman visits a clinic with her  friend. This provides evidence for collective action as a mechanism  underlying the positive peer effect.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2016cf1002&r=soc

12. The Sensitive Nature of Social Trust to Intelligence

    Oasis Kodila-Tedika (Université de Kinshasa Département d’Eco)

    Simplice Asongu (Yaoundé/Cameroun)

    Florentin Azia-Dimbu (Université Pédagogique Nationale Faculté)  This study investigates the relationship between social trust and  intelligence. The extreme bound analysis of Levine and Renelt is employed to  directly assess the strength of the nexus. The findings confirm the positive  and robust nexus between social trust and intelligence. We have contributed  to the literature by confirming that the previously established positive  linkage between intelligence and trust is not statistically fragile. In fact  the nexus withstands further empirical scrutiny with more robust empirical  strategies.

    Keywords: Trust; Intelligence; Human Capital; Extreme Bound Analysis

    JEL: G20 I20 I29 J24 P48 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:agd:wpaper:16/005&r=soc

13. The not so Gentle Push: Behavioral Spillovers and Policy Instruments

    Giovanna d’Adda (Politecnico di Milano)

    Valerio Capraro (Center for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI))

    Massimo Tavoni (Politecnico di Milano, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) and Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC)) 

We examine whether spillovers of pro-social behavior depend on how behavioral  changes are induced. We conduct a large experiment using economic games, with  a Dictator Game (DG) followed by either an identical game or a Prisoner’s  Dilemma (PD). We influence initial behavior through widely used policy  instruments, either behaviorally informed (default, social norms) or with an  economic/regulatory rationale (incentives, regulation). Our results provide  evidence of positive spillovers to subsequent economic games (which are not  treated), but only for the traditional economic/regulatory interventions and  within the same game type. Specifically, inducing higher giving in the first  stage leads to subsequent higher altruism in the DG, but not to more  cooperation in the PD. The carry over of pro-social behavior appears to be  driven by an anchoring on the initial donation. We also measure observers’ beliefs and we find that these results are not correctly anticipated by third  parties, who systematically overestimate both the direct effect of  behaviorally informed interventions on initial donations and their spillover  to subsequent donations.

    Keywords: Pro-social Behavior, Traditional and Behavioral Policies,

     Spillover Effects, Online Experiment

    JEL: H4 I3

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2015.108&r=soc

14. Does Fundraising Create New Giving?

    Jonathan Meer

 Despite an extensive literature on the impacts of a variety of charitable  fundraising techniques, little is known about whether these activities  increase overall giving or merely cause donors to substitute away from other  causes. Using detailed data from Donorschoose.org, an online platform linking  teachers with prospective donors, I examine the extent to which matching  grants for donations to certain requests affect giving to others. Eligibility  for matches is determined in entirely by observable attributes of the  request, providing an exogenous source of variation in incentives to donate  to between charities. I find that, while matches increase giving to eligible  requests, they do not appear to crowd out giving to similar ones, either  contemporaneously or over time.

    JEL: D64 H41

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22033&r=soc

15. Social Media in Virtual Marketing

    Jalees, Tariq

    Tariq, Huma

    Zaman, Syed Imran

    Alam Kazmi, Syed Hasnain

 Social media usage in the world and especially in Pakistan has a high growth  due to which it (social media) has a potential of becoming an effective  marketing tool. Despite its comparatively low cost and significance,  marketers are not effectively utilizing social media. Thus the aim of this  study is to measure the influence (effect) of four social variables: social  capital, trust, homophily and interpersonal influence on electronic word of  mouth (eWOM) communication. The sample size for the study is 300 and  preselected enumerator’s collected the data from the leading shopping malls  of the city. Although the scales and measures adopted for this study have  been earlier validated in other countries, however the same were  re-ascertained on the present set of data. After preliminary analysis,  including normality and validity the overall model was tested through  Structural Equation Model (SEM). This was carried out in two stages -  initially CFA for all the constructs was ascertained which was followed by  CFA of the overall model. Developed conceptual framework was empirically  tested on the present set of data in Pakistan which adequately explained  consumer attitudinal behavior towards electronic word of mouth (eWOM)  communication. Three hypotheses failed to be rejected and one was rejected.

 Trust was found to be the strongest predictor of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) communication, followed by homophily and social capital. Interpersonal  influence has no relationship with electronic word of mouth (eWOM)  communication. The results were consistent to earlier literature. Implication  for markers was drawn from the results.

    Keywords: eWOM; social capital; trust; homophily and interpersonal

     influence; social media

    JEL: M1 M3 M31

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:69868&r=soc

16. Constructing Social Division to Support Cooperation

    Choy, James P. (University of Warwick)  Many societies are divided into multiple smaller groups. Certain kinds of  interaction are more likely to take place within a group than across groups.

 I model a reputation effect that enforces these divisions. Agents who  interact with members of different groups can support lower levels of  cooperation with members of their own groups. A hierarchical relationship  between groups appears endogenously in equilibrium. Group divisions appear  without any external cause, and improvements in formal contracting  institutions may cause group divisions to disappear. Qualitative evidence  from the anthropological literature is consistent with several predictions of  the model.

    Keywords: Cooperation, Caste, Social Institution JEL Classification: C73,

     O12, O17

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:266&r=soc

17. Homo moralis: Personal characteristics, institutions, and moral decision-making

    Deckers, Thomas

    Falk, Armin

    Kosse, Fabian

    Szech, Nora

 This paper studies how individual characteristics, institutions, and their  interaction influence moral decisions. We validate a moral paradigm focusing  on the willingness to accept harming third parties. Consequences of moral  decisions are real. We explore how moral behavior varies with individual  characteristics and how these characteristics interact with market  institutions compared to situations of individual decision-making.

 Intelligence, female gender, and the existence of siblings positively  influence moral decisions, in individual and in market environments. Yet in  markets, most personalities tend to follow overall much lower moral  standards. Only fluid intelligence specifically counteracts moraleroding  effects of markets.

    Keywords: homo moralis,moral personality,real moral task,markets and

     personality,trade and morals

    JEL: D02 D03 J10

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbeoc:spii2016302&r=soc

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