In this issue we feature 6 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. Persistent Social Networks: Civil War Veterans who Fought Together Co-Locate in Later Life - Dora L. Costa; Matthew E. Kahn; Christopher Roudiez; Sven Wilson
2. Bride Price and Female Education - Nava Ashraf; Natalie Bau; Nathan Nunn; Alessandra Voena
3. Gender and Corruption: The Neglected Role of Culture - Julia Debski; Michael Jetter; Saskia Mösle; David Stadelmann
4. Social participation and self-rated psychological health - Fiorillo, Damiano; Lubrano Lavadera, Giuseppe; Nappo, Nunzia
5. New Evidence on Trust and Well-being - John F. Helliwell; Haifang Huang; Shun Wang
6. Racism and judicial corruption in the US - Michael Jetter; Alejandro Mesa Osorio

1. Persistent Social Networks: Civil War Veterans who Fought Together

    Co-Locate in Later Life

   Dora L. Costa

   Matthew E. Kahn

   Christopher Roudiez

   Sven Wilson

 At the end of the U.S Civil War, veterans had to choose whether to return to  their prewar communities or move to new areas. The late 19th Century was a  time of sharp urban growth as workers sought out the economic opportunities  offered by cities. By estimating discrete choice migration models, we  quantify the tradeoffs that veterans faced. Veterans were less likely to move  far from their origin and avoided urban immigrant areas and high mortality  risk areas. They also avoided areas that opposed the Civil War. Veterans were  more likely to move to a neighborhood or a county where men from their same  war company lived. This co-location evidence highlights the existence of  persistent social networks. Such social networks had long-term consequences:

 veterans living close to war time friends enjoyed a longer life.

   JEL: J61 N91 R23

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22397&r=soc

2. Bride Price and Female Education

   Nava Ashraf

   Natalie Bau

   Nathan Nunn

   Alessandra Voena

 Traditional cultural practices can play an important role in development, but  can also inspire condemnation. The custom of bride price, prevalent  throughout sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia as a payment by the groom to  the family of the bride, is one example. In this paper, we show a perhaps  surprising economic consequence of this practice. We revisit one of the  best-studied historical development projects, the INPRES school construction  program in Indonesia, and show that previously found small effects on female  enrollment mask heterogeneity by bride price tradition. Ethnic groups that  traditionally engage in bride price payments at marriage increased female  enrollment in response to the program. Within these ethnic groups, higher  female education at marriage is associated with a higher bride price payment  received, providing a greater incentive for parents to invest in girls'

 education and take advantage of the increased supply of schools. However, we  see no increase in education following school construction for girls from  ethnicities without a bride price tradition. We replicate these findings in  Zambia, where we exploit a similar school expansion program that took place  in the early 2000s. While there may be significant downsides to a bride price  tradition, our results suggest that any change to this cultural custom should  likely be considered alongside additional policies to promote female  education.

   JEL: I21 I25 O53 O55 Z1 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22417&r=soc

3. Gender and Corruption: The Neglected Role of Culture

   Julia Debski

   Michael Jetter

   Saskia Mösle

   David Stadelmann

 Empirical findings of a negative association between female participation in  politics and the labor market, and levels of corruption have received great  attention. We reproduce this correlation for 177 countries from 1998 to 2014.

 Once taking account of country-specific heterogeneity by fixed effects, the  negative association disappears entirely in terms of statistical significance  and magnitude. This suggests that female participation in politics and the  labor market is not directly linked to lower corruption. Exploiting different  dimensions of culture as country-specific characteristics, our analysis shows  that power distance and masculinity systematically affect corruption. These  two cultural characteristics are sufficient to fully mitigate any association  between gender and corruption. Our findings point out the importance of  culture and suggest that its omission causes a spurious correlation, leading  to the erroneous claim that increased female participation in public life  alone reduces corruption.

   Keywords: Gender; corruption; female participation; power distance; culture; development

   JEL: J16 D73 Z10

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

4. Social participation and self-rated psychological health

   Fiorillo, Damiano

   Lubrano Lavadera, Giuseppe

   Nappo, Nunzia

 Although structural and cognitive social capital have been hypothesized to  have positive influence on psychological health, few papers found positive  correlation and causal relationship between social capital dimensions and  psychological wellbeing. This longitudinal study investigates the effect of  social participation in associations - member, active, member and active - on  self-rated psychological health using five waves of the British Household  Panel Survey that follows the same individuals between years 1991 and 1995.

 Self-rated psychological health is assessed by single items of the General  Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Using ordered logit fixed effect methods the  paper shows that being member and active in associations increases all  “positive” items of self-rated psychological health and decreases two main  “negative” items of psychological wellbeing.

   Keywords: Social capital, social participation, psychological health, ordered logit fixed effect, British Household Panel Survey

   JEL: C23 D71 I1 I3 Z1

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:72879&r=soc

5. New Evidence on Trust and Well-being

   John F. Helliwell

   Haifang Huang

   Shun Wang

 This paper first uses data from three large international surveys – the  Gallup World Poll, the World Values Survey and the European Social Survey –  to estimate income-equivalent values for social trust, with a likely lower  bound equivalent to a doubling of household income. Second, the more detailed  and precisely measured trust data in the European Social Survey (ESS) show  that social trust is only a part of the overall climate of trust. While  social trust and trust in police are the most important elements, there are  significant additional benefits from trust in three aspects of the  institutional environment: the legal system, parliament and politicians. Thus  estimates of the total well-being value of a trustworthy environment are  larger than those based on social trust alone. Third, the ESS data show that  living in a high-trust environment makes people more resilient to adversity.

 Being subject to discrimination, ill-health or unemployment, although always  damaging to subjective well-being, is much less damaging to those living in  trustworthy environments. These results suggest a fresh set of links between  trust and inequality. Individuals who are subject to discrimination,  ill-health or unemployment are typically concentrated towards the lower end  of any national distribution of happiness. Thus the resilience-increasing  feature of social trust reduces well-being inequality by channeling the  largest benefits to those at the low end of the well-being distribution.

   JEL: I31 J15 O57

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22450&r=soc

6. Racism and judicial corruption in the US

   Michael Jetter

   Alejandro Mesa Osorio

 Is racial hate reflected in the degree of judicial corruption? Using US  state-level data, we find racial hate to be a positive and statistically  powerful predictor of judicial corruption. This relationship prevails after  the inclusion of the conventional control variables and regional fixed  effects. In terms of magnitude, one standard deviation increase of racial  hate relates to an increase of 70 percent of one standard deviation in  corruption. Interestingly, no such relationship can be found for corruption  in the executive or legislative branch.

   Keywords: corruption, racism

   JEL: D63 D73 H73 J15 J78

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000122:014965&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 >.