In this issue we feature 9 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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In this issue we have:

1. Achieving the American Dream: Cultural Distance, Cultural Diversity and Economic Performance - Valeria Rueda; Guillaume Laval; Etienne Patin
2. Cultural Persistence' of Health Capital: Evidence from European Migrants - Costa-Font, J.; Sato, A.
3. Can War Foster Cooperation? Michal Bauer; Christopher Blattman; Julie Chytilová; Joseph Henrich; Edward Miguel; Tamar Mitts
4. Fear and Political Participation: Evidence from Africa - Kevin M. Morrison; Marc Rockmore
5. Human Capital, Social Capabilities and Economic Growth - Muhammad Ali; Abiodun Egbetokun; Manzoor Hussain Memon
6. Dynamic Effects of Co-Ethnic Networks on Immigrants' Economic Success - Michele Battisti; Giovanni Peri; Agnese Romiti
7. Volunteering and perceived health. A European cross-countries investigation - Fiorillo, Damiano; Nappo, Nunzia
8. Social capital, institutions and policymaking - Savioli, Marco; Patuelli, Roberto
9. European Cities and Foreign Investment Networks - Riccardo Crescenzi; Kerwin Datu; Simona Iammarino
10. Relationship between past experience, social network participation and creative capacity: Vietnamese entrepreneurship survey - Quang-Hoi Vu; Thu Trang Vuong; Quan-Hoang Vuong
11. Learning Dynamics Based on Social Comparisons - Juan I Block; Drew Fudenberg; David K Levine

 1. Achieving the American Dream: Cultural Distance, Cultural Diversity and Economic Performance

    Valeria Rueda (Sciences Po and Pembroke College, Oxford)

    Guillaume Laval (Institut Pasteur)

    Etienne Patin (Institut Pasteur)

 This article explores the role of individual cultural distance on income,  using the genetic distance as a proxy for cultural distance. We show that  cultural distance has heterogeneous predictive power.In particular,  culturally distant individuals living in regions with other individuals from  more trusting ancestries or less xenophobic ones are more likely to be  economically successful. First generation migrants seem to be less likely to  success the more culturally distant they are, but this e?ect vanishes as time  spent in the USA increases. Our research challenges the static view that  cultural di?erences are necessarily an obstacle to economic performance in  the long-run. Our interpretation of the results is robust to the use of  alternative measures for cultural distance.

    Keywords: Cultural Distance, Cultural Diversity, Genetics, Historical

     Persistence, Labor Participation, Social Capital.

    JEL: J61 N30 O15 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_140&r=soc

 2. 'Cultural Persistence' of Health Capital: Evidence from European Migrants

    Costa-Font, J.

    Sato, A.

 Culture is an under-studied determinant of health production and seldom  measured. This paper empirically examines the persistence and association of  health capital assessments of first and second-generation migrants with that  of their ancestral countries. We draw on European data from 30 countries,  including over 90 countries of birth and control for timing of migration,  selective migration and other controls including citizenship and cultural  proxies. Our results show robust evidence of cultural persistence of health  assessments. Culture persists, rather than fades, and further, appears to  strengthen over generations. We estimate a one standard deviation increase in  ancestral health assessment increases first generation migrant’s health  assessments by an average of 16%, and that of second generation migrants  between 11% and 25%. Estimates are heterogeneous by gender (larger for males)  and lineage (larger for paternal lineage).

    Keywords: assimilation; health; health assessments; cultural persistence;

     first generation migrant; second generation migrant;

    JEL: I18 H23 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:16/09&r=soc

 3. Can War Foster Cooperation?

    Michal Bauer (CERGE-EI and Charles University)

    Christopher Blattman (Columbia University, New York City and National

     Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

    Julie Chytilová (CERGE-EI and Charles University)

    Joseph Henrich (Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts and CIFAR,

     Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

    Edward Miguel (University of California, Berkeley, California, and

     National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

    Tamar Mitts (Columbia University, New York City, New York)  In the past decade, nearly 20 studies have found a strong, persistent pattern  in surveys and behavioral experiments from over 40 countries: individual  exposure to war violence tends to increase social cooperation at the local  level, including community participation and prosocial behavior. Thus while  war has many negative legacies for individuals and societies, it appears to  leave a positive legacy in terms of local cooperation and civic engagement.

 We discuss, synthesize and reanalyze the emerging body of evidence, and weigh  alternative explanations. There is some indication that war violence  especially enhances in-group or “parochial” norms and preferences, a finding  that, if true, suggests that the rising social cohesion we document need not  promote broader peace.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:224&r=soc

 4. Fear and Political Participation: Evidence from Africa

    Kevin M. Morrison (University of Pittsburgh)

    Marc Rockmore (Clark University, Worcester)  Research finds that personal exposure to violence or crime increases  political participation. The effects of fear, however, have not been studied.

 Since the number of victims is much smaller than those who are afraid of  becoming a victim, this suggests an important but unexplored channel from  crime to political participation. Moreover, if people who experience violence  or crime are also afraid of future exposure, existing estimates conflate the  effects of past experience with those of fear of future exposure. We find  that fear of crime accounts for 10-23 percent of the effect previously  attributed to direct exposure. We further find important differences between  the effects of fear and victimization on political attitudes. Whereas victims  of crimes have more authoritarian political attitudes, people who are fearful  of crime are more supportive of democracy and equality, and hold other  attitudes that are normally associated with rule of law and democracy.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:226&r=soc

 5. Human Capital, Social Capabilities and Economic Growth

    Muhammad Ali (Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Faculty of Economics and

     Business Administration)

    Abiodun Egbetokun (National Centre for Technology Management Federal

     Ministry of Science and Technology, Nigeria, and Tshwane University of

     Technology, Pretoria South Africa)

    Manzoor Hussain Memon (Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC),

     Karachi, Pakistan, and Applied Economics Research Centre, University of

     Karachi, Pakistan)

 In this paper we show that inconclusive results in previous empirical studies  on human capital and growth might be due to omitted variable bias. Using data  for about 130 countries, we show that after inclusion of variables related to  the social capabilities concept of Abramovitz (1986) i.e. economic  opportunities and quality of legal institutions, the human capital variable  turns out to be significant. We also show that economic opportunities  significantly moderate the relationship between human capital and growth. The  results are robust to different variants of indices for economic  opportunities and the quality of legal system.

    Keywords: Human Capital, Economic Growth, Economic Opportunities, Social

     Capabilities

    JEL: O15 O4

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2016-013&r=soc

 6. Dynamic Effects of Co-Ethnic Networks on Immigrants' Economic Success

    Michele Battisti

    Giovanni Peri

    Agnese Romiti

 This paper investigates how the size of co-ethnic networks at arrival  affected the economic success of immigrants in Germany. Applying panel  analysis with a large set of fixed effects and controls, we isolate the  association between initial network size and long-run immigrant outcomes.

 Focusing on refugees – assigned to an initial location independently of their  choice – allows a causal interpretation of the estimated coefficient. We find  that immigrants initially located in places with larger co-ethnic networks  are more likely to be employed at first, but have a lower probability of  investing in human capital. In the long run they are more likely to be  mis-matched in their job and to earn a lower wage.

    JEL: J24 J61 R23

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22389&r=soc

 7. Volunteering and perceived health. A European cross-countries investigation

    Fiorillo, Damiano

    Nappo, Nunzia

 In this paper, we study the effect of formal and informal volunteering on  self-perceived health across 9 European countries after controlling, amongst  other things, for socio-economic characteristics, social and cultural  participation. We employ the 2006 wave of EU-SILC for estimating recursive  trivariate probit models with instrumental variables. Our results show that  although formal and informal volunteering are correlated with each other,  they have a different impact on health. Formal volunteering has a significant  positive effect on self-perceived health in the Netherlands, but none in  other countries. By contrast, informal volunteering has a significant  negative effect on self-perceived health in Austria, Finland, France, the  Netherlands, Spain, and Italy.

    Keywords: Self-perceived health, formal and informal volunteering, social and cultural participation, recursive trivariate probit model, European countries

    JEL: C3 D64 I1 P5 Z10

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:72313&r=soc

 8. Social capital, institutions and policymaking

    Savioli, Marco

    Patuelli, Roberto

 Economic processes, consisting of interactions between human beings, exploit  the social capital of persons endowed with specific cultures, identities and  education. By taking into account this complexity, the authors focus on the  role of institutions and policymaking in the building of social capital and  its relevance to the fulfilment of their objectives. Social capital, however,  is elusive and has several dimensions with which to interpret its  multifaceted functions in economics and society. The authors cannot forget  that social capital is sometimes even undesirable for society, for instance  when unethically used. Even so, it is widely accepted that social capital has  stable and positive effects.

    Keywords: social capital,institutions,policymaker,ed

     ucation

    JEL: Z13 B52 D78

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201626&r=soc

 9. European Cities and Foreign Investment Networks

    Riccardo Crescenzi

    Kerwin Datu

    Simona Iammarino

 Although one of the core questions in the study of multinational enterprises

 (MNEs) has been typically that of where their different operations take  place, the spatial dimension of MNE investments and functions is still  relatively underexplored in the literature. This paper investigates the  networks formed by Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by applying network  analysis techniques drawn from the world city network literature. Data is  extracted from the fDi Markets database to describe and analyse the geography  of FDI flows between a set of 3,500 cities and towns within the European  Union (EU) Member States and their neighbourhood. The paper identifies  hierarchical patterns of relations between different types of locations, and  gains a finer-scaled appreciation of sectoral and functional specialisations  of different regions within Europe.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egu:wpaper:1616&r=soc

10. Relationship between past experience, social network participation and creative capacity: Vietnamese entrepreneurship survey

    Quang-Hoi Vu

    Thu Trang Vuong

    Quan-Hoang Vuong

 The notions of entrepreneurship and creativity in developed economies,  despite having gained attention among researchers, remain embryonic in  numerous emerging economies. Being focused on entrepreneurs in a typical  transitional and emerging market economy, Vietnam, this paper aims to  empirically explore the influence that past entrepreneurial efforts may exert  on the perceptions of entrepreneurs about their own creativity performance.

 The study also seeks to understand how entrepreneurs social networks  contribute to perceived creativity capacity by entrepreneurs who participate  in those societies. The empirical research results suggest that entrepreneurs  with business experience and active networking engagement are more likely to  believe in their own creativity. This knowledge and insights in turn offer  some implications for addressing the lack of radical creativity among  Vietnamese entrepreneurs.

    Keywords: Creativity/innovation; entrepreneurship; emerging economy;

     Vietnam

    JEL: M13 O33 P21 P27

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/233156&r=soc

11. Learning Dynamics Based on Social Comparisons

    Juan I Block

    Drew Fudenberg

    David K Levine

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cla:levarc:786969000000001375&r=soc

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