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 Chance of Influence: A Natural Experiment on the Role of Social Capital in Faculty Recruitment - Olivier Godechot
2. Effectiveness of Social Capital in the Job Search Process - Ralf Werner Koßmann
3. Why do some countries fear immigration more than others? Evidence from Europe - Matija Kovacic; Cristina Orso
4. Religion and the Family: The Case of the Amish - Choy, James P.
5. Norm enforcement in the city revisited: An international field experiment of altruistic punishment, norm maintenance, and broken windows - Joël Berger; Debra Hevenstone
6. Terminal Decline in Well-Being: The Role of Social Orientation - Denis Gerstorf; Christiane A. Hoppmann; Corinna E. Löckenhoff; Frank J. Infurna; Jürgen Schupp; Gert G. Wagner; Nilam Ram
7. Non-Monetary Feedback Induces more Cooperation : Students and Workers in a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism - Davide Dragone; Fabio Galeotti; Raimondello Orsini
8. Violence Against Women: A Cross-cultural Analysis for Africa - Alberto Alesina; Benedetta Brioschi; Eliana La Ferrara
9. Social Norms, Labor Market Opportunities, and the Marriage Gap for Skilled Women - Marianne Bertrand; Patricia Cortés; Claudia Olivetti; Jessica Pan
10. Impact of social interactions on demand curves for innovative products - Katarzyna Maciejowska; Arkadiusz Jedrzejewski; Anna Kowalska-Pyzalska; Rafal Weron
11. Understanding peer effects : on the nature, estimation and channels of peer effects - Feld J.F.; Zölitz U.N.
12. A Game Theoretic Approach to Community based Data Sharing in Mobile Ad hoc networks - Premm Raj H.; Ranganathan, Kavitha
13. Money priming and social behavior of natural groups in simple bargaining and dilemma experiments - Julija Michailova; Christoph Bühren
14. An economic theory of religious belief - Strulik, Holger
15. Endogenous Correlated Network Dynamics - Frank Page; Rui Gong; Myrna Wooders
16. Peer Networks and Tobacco Consumption in South Africa - Alfred Kechia Mukong
17. Homo moralis: Personal characteristics, institutions, and moral decision-making - Deckers, Thomas; Falk, Armin; Kosse, Fabian; Szech, Nora

 1. The Chance of Influence: A Natural Experiment on the Role of Social Capital in Faculty Recruitment

    Olivier Godechot (MaxPo, Sciences Po)  The effect of social capital is often overestimated because contacts and  centrality can be a consequence of success rather than its cause. Only rare  randomized or natural experiments can assess the real causal effect of social  capital. This paper relies on data from one such experiment: faculty  recruitment at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)  between 1960 and 2005, a leading French institution of higher education in  the social sciences. It exploits the fact that the electoral commission, a  hiring committee which produces a first ranking of applicants, is partly  composed of faculty members drawn at random. It shows that when the PhD  advisor is randomly drawn, it doubles the chances of an applicant of being  shortlisted.

    Keywords: recruitment; networks; social capital; academia; causality

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/37ufknmfv39tppkbjb4dmidnqe&r=soc

 2. Effectiveness of Social Capital in the Job Search Process

    Ralf Werner Koßmann

 The empirical literature has provided ample yet contradictory evidence on the  effectiveness of social ties in the job search process in terms of post-hire  outcomes, such as wages or job satisfaction. Whereas early research, mainly  focussing on the U.S. labour market, found positive correlations between  finding a job via social ties and post-hire outcomes, most recent studies  reported inconclusive or even negative correlations. Country differences in  the effectiveness of social ties could be explained by differences in the  effectiveness of other search channels, e.g. public institutions. Therefore,  this study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the  effectiveness of social ties in the German labour market which is commonly  regarded as rather strict and monitored by strong labour market institutions.

 Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), it is analysed  whether wages, job satisfaction, and fluctuation are affected by the job  finding channel. Furthermore, this is the first study which investigates  whether job changes affect wage and job satisfaction differentials between  the current and the previous job. Results show that finding a job via social  ties is not related to higher income; yet, weak evidence can be found for  higher job satisfaction and a reduction in turnover.

    Keywords: Job search, unemployment, social ties, social capital

    JEL: J24 J28 J31 J63

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp823&r=soc

 3. Why do some countries fear immigration more than others? Evidence from Europe

    Matija Kovacic (Department of Economics, University Of Venice Cà Foscari)

    Cristina Orso (Department of Economics, University Of Venice Cà Foscari)  In this paper we show that the individuals' perception of immigration is  shake by their cultural and social characteristics. In order to account for  cultural differences in a broader sense, we rely on linguistic relativity  theory according to which linguistic differences in grammatical structure may  induce speakers of different languages to conceptualize and experience the  world differently (Sapir (1921), Whorf and Carroll (1964)). Linguistic  variation is measured by means of a specific linguistic marker developed in  Kovacic et al. (2015) based on the number of grammatical categories  (moods)concerned with the expression of uncertainty. We show that more  intensive users of these specific grammatical forms are signficantly more  intolerant toward immigration with respect to other identical individuals  speaking a different language/s. In line with Kovacic et al. (2015), this  result can be interpreted as a direct consequence of individual unobserved  general attitude towards uncertainty reflected by the specific linguistic  marker used to measure the degree of linguistic variation. The results are  robust to the inclusion of additional set of explanatory and control  variables, country and year fixed effects, and alternative estimation methods.

    Keywords: Immigration, Tolerance, Uncertainty, Integration, Culture, Language

    JEL: D80 Z13 J15 D83

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2016:05&r=soc

 4. Religion and the Family: The Case of the Amish

    Choy, James P. (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: Cultural Economics, Non-market Production, Public Goods,

     Religion JEL Classification: D13, H4, Z10, Z12

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:267&r=soc

 5. Norm enforcement in the city revisited: An international field experiment of altruistic punishment, norm maintenance, and broken windows

    Joël Berger

    Debra Hevenstone

 In laboratory experiments people are willing to sanction norms at a cost – a  behavioral tendency called altruistic punishment. However, the degree to  which these findings can be generalized to real-world interactions is still  debated. Only a small number of field experiments have been conducted and  initial results suggest that punishment is less frequent outside of the lab.

 This study replicates one of the first field experiments on altruistic  punishment and builds ties to research on norm compliance and the broken  windows theory. The original study addressed the enforcement of the  anti-littering norm in Athens. We replicate this study in Bern, Zurich, and  New York City. As an extension, we investigate how the experimental context  (clean vs. littered) impacts social norm enforcement. As a second extension,  we investigate how opportunity structure impacts the maintenance of the  anti-littering norm. Findings indicate that norms are universally enforced,  although significantly less than in the standard laboratory experiment, and  that enforcement is significantly more common in Switzerland than in New  York. Moreover, individuals prefer more subtle forms of enforcement to direct  punishment. We also find that enforcement is less frequent in littered than  in clean contexts, suggesting that broken windows might not only foster  deviant behavior but also weaken informal social control. Finally, we find  that opportunity structure can encourage people to maintain norms, as  indicated by the fact that people are more likely to voluntarily pick up  litter when it is closer to a trash bin.

    Keywords: broken windows, field experiment, norm enforcement, punishment, social control

    JEL: H41

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ets:wpaper:11&r=soc

 6. Terminal Decline in Well-Being: The Role of Social Orientation

    Denis Gerstorf

    Christiane A. Hoppmann

    Corinna E. Löckenhoff

    Frank J. Infurna

    Jürgen Schupp

    Gert G. Wagner

    Nilam Ram

 Well-being development at the end of life is often characterized by steep  deteriorations, but individual differences in these terminal declines are  substantial and not yet well understood. This study moved beyond the typical  consideration of health predictors and explored the role of social  orientation and engagement. To do so, we made use of social variables at the  behavioral level (self-ratings of social participation) and the motivational  level (valuing social and family goals), assessed two to four years before  death. We applied single- and multi-phase growth models to up to 27-year  annual longitudinal data from 2,910 now deceased participants of the  nation-wide German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP; ageat death: M = 74  years; SD = 14; 48% women). Results revealed that leading a socially active  life and prioritizing social goals in late life were independently associated  with higher late-life well-being, less pronounced late-life decline, and a  lateronset of terminal decline. Significant interaction effects suggested  that the effects of (reduced) social participation and (lowered) social goals  were compounding each other.compound. Findings also indicated that less  decline in social participation was associated with shallower rates and a  later onset of well-being decline. We found little evidence that valuing  family goals is associated with late-life trajectories of well-being.

 Associations were independent of key correlates of well-being and mortality,  including age at death, gender, education, disability, hospital stays, and  goals in other life domains. We discuss possible pathways by which  maintaining social orientation into late life may help mitigate terminal  decline in well-being.

    Keywords: Successful aging, life satisfaction, social support, longitudinal change, development, mortality, German Socio-Economic Panel

     Study, SOEP

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp821&r=soc

 7. Non-Monetary Feedback Induces more Cooperation : Students and Workers in a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism

    Davide Dragone (University of Bologna, Department of Economics, Piazza

     Scaravilli 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy)

    Fabio Galeotti (Université de Lyon, Lyon, F-69007, France ; CNRS, GATE

     Lyon St Etienne,F-69130 Ecully, France)

    Raimondello Orsini (University of Bologna, Department of Economics, Strada

     Maggiore 45, 40125 Bologna, Italy)

 We conduct an artefactual field experiment to study and compare the behavior  of workers and students in a linear voluntary contribution mechanism in which  subjects can assign immaterial sanctions or rewards to the other group  members. We find that both students and workers sanction group members who  contribute less than the group average, and reward those who contribute more.

 In both subject samples, the use of non-monetary sanctions and rewards  induces more cooperation. The magnitude of the effect, however, is  heterogeneous, as feedback has more impact among students who, contrary to  workers, respond positively to sanctions. Students also tend to use sanctions  more than workers. We discuss the implications of these findings for social  cohesion, cooperative spirit and organizational efficiency in the workplace.

    Keywords: public good, field experiment, non-monetary sanctions and rewards, communication, external validity

    JEL: C92 C93 H41

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:1612&r=soc

 8. Violence Against Women: A Cross-cultural Analysis for Africa

    Alberto Alesina

    Benedetta Brioschi

    Eliana La Ferrara

 Using a new dataset, we investigate the determinants of violence against  women in Africa. We focus on cultural factors arising from pre-colonial  customs and find evidence consistent with two hypotheses. First, ancient  socioeconomic conditions determine social norms about gender roles, family  structures and intrafamily violence which persist even when the initial  conditions change. Norms about marriage patterns, living arrangements and the  productive role of women are associated with contemporary violence. Second,  women’s contemporary economic role affects violence in a complex way which is  itself related to traditional norms in ancient times and current bargaining  power within the marriage.

    JEL: E62

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21901&r=soc

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

    Marianne Bertrand

    Patricia Cortés

    Claudia Olivetti

    Jessica Pan

 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.

    JEL: J0 J01 J11 J12 J16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22015&r=soc

10. Impact of social interactions on demand curves for innovative products

    Katarzyna Maciejowska

    Arkadiusz Jedrzejewski

    Anna Kowalska-Pyzalska

    Rafal Weron

 Empirical studies suggest that word-of-mouth (WOM) strongly influences the  innovation diffusion process and is responsible for the 'S' shape of the  adoption curve. However, it is not clear how WOM affects demand curves for  innovative products and strategic decisions of producers. Using an  agent-based model of innovation diffusion, which links consumer opinions with  reservation prices, we show that a relatively strong WOM effect can lead to  the creation of two separated price-quantity regimes, with a nonlinear  transition between them. A small shift of the product's market price can  result in a drastic change of the demanded quantity and, hence, the revenues  of a firm. Using Monte Carlo simulations and mean-field treatment we  demonstrate that WOM may have ambiguous consequences and should be taken into  account when designing marketing strategies.

    Keywords: Word-of-mouth; Innovation diffusion; Agent-based model; Demand

     curve; Marketing strategy

    JEL: C63 O33 Q55

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wuu:wpaper:hsc1604&r=soc

11. Understanding peer effects : on the nature, estimation and channels of peer effects

    Feld J.F.

    Zölitz U.N. (ROA)

 This paper estimates peer effects in a university context where students are  randomly assigned to sections. While students benefit from better peers on  average, lowachieving students are harmed by high-achieving peers. Analyzing  students course evaluations suggests that peer effects are driven by improved  group interaction rather than adjustments in teachers behavior or students  effort. We further show, building on Angrist 2014, that classical measurement  error in a setting where group assignment is systematic can lead to  substantial overestimation of peer effects. With random assignment, as is the  case in our setting, estimates are only attenuated.

    Keywords: Analysis of Education; Education and Inequality; Human Capital;

     Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity;

    JEL: I21 I24 J24

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:umaror:2016001&r=soc

12. A Game Theoretic Approach to Community based Data Sharing in Mobile Ad hoc networks

    Premm Raj H.

    Ranganathan, Kavitha

 Government interventions on usage of free speech for communication has been  rising of late. The government of Iraq’s ban on the Internet, ban of mobile  communications in Hong Kong student protests highlight the same. Applications  like Firechat which use mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) to enable off the  grid communication between mobile users, have gained popularity in these  regions. However, there have been limited studies on selfish user behavior in  community data sharing networks. We wish to study these data sharing  communities using game theoretic principles and propose a normal form game.

 We model selfishness in community data sharing MANETs and define the  rationality for selfishness in these networks. We also look at the impact of  altruism in community data sharing MANETs and address the issue of minimum  number of altruistic users needed to sustain the MANET. We validate the novel  model using exhaustive simulations and empirically derive important  observations.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iim:iimawp:14425&r=soc

13. Money priming and social behavior of natural groups in simple bargaining and dilemma experiments

    Julija Michailova (Kozminski University)

    Christoph Bühren (University of Kassel)  We examine the effects of money priming and solidarity on individual behavior  in three simple experiments: dictator game, ultimatum game, and prisoner’s  dilemma. Our study comprises two money treatments and two neutral (control)  treatments. Additionally, we control for the strength of social ties between  experimental participants. Although our priming procedure is sufficient to  remind people of the concept of money, it is not sufficient to induce  systematically different behavior of the treatment groups compared to the  control groups. Moreover, we do not find any significant differences between  groups with strong vs. weak social ties. Since our findings contradict  previous research, it calls for further investigation on the topic of how  money priming influences economic behavior.

    Keywords: money priming; bargaining; dilemma; social behavior; natural groups; economic experiment

    JEL: C78 C9

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mar:magkse:201530&r=soc

14. An economic theory of religious belief

    Strulik, Holger

 In this paper I consider how individuals allocate their time between church  attendance (and other religious activities) and secular leisure activities.

 Moreover individuals use a cognitive style, which is either  intuitive-believing or reflective-analytical. I assume that the full benefit  from religious activities is achieved by intuitive believers. The model  predicts that, ceteris paribus, wealthier individuals and individuals with  higher cognitive ability are more likely to abandon the intuitive-believing  cognitive style. They may continue to attend church but do so less frequently  than intuitive believers. In general equilibrium, there exists a locally  stable steady state where believing and frequent church attendance is  widespread across the social strata. A sufficiently large negative shock  (e.g. the Enlightenment, repeal of Sunday shopping laws), however, initiates  the gradual secularization of society.

    Keywords: religiosity,church attendance,cognitive style,consumerism,fuzzy

     fidelity

    JEL: N30 D11 Z12 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cegedp:273&r=soc

15. Endogenous Correlated Network Dynamics

    Frank Page (Indiana University)

    Rui Gong (Indiana University)

    Myrna Wooders (Vanderbilt University)  We model the structure and strategy of social interactions prevailing at any  point in time as a directed network and address the following question: given  the rules of network and coalition formation, preferences of individuals over  networks, strategic behavior of coalitions in forming networks, and the  trembles of nature, what network and coalitional dynamics are likely to  emergence and persist. We formulate the problemas a dynamic, stochastic game  and v equilibrium (in network and coalition formation strategies), (ii)  together with the trembles of nature, this correlated stationary equilibrium  determines an equilibrium Markov process of network and coalition formation,  and (iii) this endogenous Markov process possesses a finite set of ergodic  measures, and generates a finite, disjoint collection of nonempty subsets of  networks and coalitions, each constituting a basin of attraction. Moreover,  we extend to the setting of endogenous Markov dynamics the notions of  pairwise stability (Jackson-Wolinsky, 1996) and the path dominance core (Page  Wooders, 2009a). We show that in order for any network-coalition pair to  emerge and persist, it is necessary that the pair reside in one of finitely  many basins of attraction. The results we obtain here build on Page and  Wooders (2009a)and the seminal contributions of Jackson and Watts (2002),  Konishi and Ray (2003), and Dutta, Ghosal, and Ray (2005).

    Keywords: KEYWORDS: games of network formation, stationary Markov

     correlated equilibrium, equilibrium Markov process of network formation,

     basins of attraction, Harris decomposition, ergodic probability measures,

     dynamic path dominance core,dynamic pairwise stability.

    JEL: C7 C6

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:van:wpaper:vuecon-sub-16-00010&r=soc

16. Peer Networks and Tobacco Consumption in South Africa

    Alfred Kechia Mukong

 This paper deepens the empirical analysis of peer networks by considering  simultaneously their effects smoking participation and smoking intensity.

 Peer network is key in determining the smoking behaviour of youths, but the  magnitude of the effects is still debated, questioned and inconclusive. I  used a control function approach, a two-step least square and the fixed  effect method to address the potential endogeneity of peer network. The  results suggest positive and signicant peer effects on smoking participation  and intensity. While the magnitude of the estimates of smoking participation  varies across methodological approaches (ranging between 4 and 20 percent),  that of smoking intensity ranges between 3 and 22 percent. Including older  adults in the peer reference group increases the peer eects. The findings  suggest that policies (excise tax) that directly aect the decision to smoke  and the smoking intensity of the peer reference group are likely to aect own  smoking behaviour.

    Keywords: Peer network, Smoking behavior, Control function, South Africa

    JEL: I10 I12 D12 C36

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rza:wpaper:586&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 moral-eroding  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:kitwps:85&r=soc

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