In this issue we feature 8 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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1. Mobile Messaging for Offline Social Interactions: A Large Field Expeiment - Ginger Zhe Jin; Guodong Gao; Tianshu Sun
2. Voting to Tell Others - Gautam Rao; John List; Stefano DellaVigna; Ulrike Malmendier
3. Beyond the personal-anonymous divide: Agency relations in powers of attorney in France, 18th–19th centuries - Fabien Eloire; Claire Lemercier; Veronica Aoki Santarosa
4. Who Becomes a Politican? Dal Bó, Ernesto; Finan, Frederico; Folke, Olle; Persson, Torsten; Rickne, Johanna
5. Trust-building in international business ventures - Alexandra Gerbasi; Dominika Latusek
6. Gender Differences in Compliance: The Role of Social Value Orientation - Grosch, Kerstin; Rau, Holger A.
7. The Concept of ‘Friendship’ in Late 18th – Early 19th Century Russia: Social Cohesion Reconsidered - Maiia Lavrinovich
8. Does Social Interaction Improve Learning Outcomes? Field Evidence from Massive Open Online Education - Dennis Zhang; Gad Allon; Jan Van Mieghem

1. Mobile Messaging for Offline Social Interactions: A Large Field Expeiment

   Ginger Zhe Jin

   Guodong Gao

   Tianshu Sun

 While much research has examined the role of technology in moderating online  user connections, how IT motivates offline interactions among users is much  less understood. Using a randomized field experiment involving 80,000  participants, we study how mobile messaging can leverage recipients' social  ties to encourage blood donation. There are three main findings: first, both  behavior intervention (in the form of reminder message) and economic reward  (in the form of individual or group reward) increase donations, but only the  messages with group reward are effective in motivating more donors to donate  with their friend(s); second, group reward tends to attract different types  of donors, especially those who are traditionally less active in online  social setting; and third, across all treatments, message recipients donate a  greater amount of blood if their friends are present. Structural estimation  further suggests that rewarding group donors is four times more  cost-effective than rewarding individual donors. Based on the structural  estimates, we perform policy simulations on the optimal design of mobile  messaging. The method of combining structural model and randomized field  experiment opens new frontiers for research on leveraging IT to mobilize a  user's social network for social good.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:natura:00571&r=soc

2. Voting to Tell Others

   Gautam Rao

   John List

   Stefano DellaVigna

   Ulrike Malmendier

 Why do people vote? We design a field experiment to estimate a model of  voting 'because others will ask'. The expectation of being asked motivates  turnout if individuals derive pride from telling others that they voted, or  feel shame from admitting that they did not vote, provided that lying is  costly. In a door-to-door survey about election turnout, we experimentally  vary (i) the informational content and use of a flyer pre-announcing the  survey, (ii) the duration and payment for the survey, and (iii) the  incentives to lie about past voting. The experimental results indicate  significant social image concerns. For the 2010 Congressional election, we  estimate a value of voting 'to tell others' of about $15, contributing 2  percentage points to turnout. Lastly, we evaluate a get-out-the-vote  intervention in which we tell potential voters that we will ask if they voted.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:framed:00575&r=soc

3. Beyond the personal-anonymous divide: Agency relations in powers of attorney in France, 18th–19th centuries

   Fabien Eloire (CLERSE - Centre lillois d'études et de recherches

    sociologiques et économiques - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche

    Scientifique - Université de Lille, Sciences et Technologies)

   Claire Lemercier (CSO - Centre de sociologie des organisations - Sciences

    Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

   Veronica Aoki Santarosa (University of Michigan [Ann Arbor])  Powers of attorney are often interpreted as evidence of trust among the  parties involved, and as such, of the existence of personal links between  principals and their proxies. We build a novel dataset of notarized powers of  attorney capturing a wide variety of agency relationships in four large  French commercial cities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to test  hypotheses on the relational basis of economic relationships. We find little  support for the idea of an evolution from personal to anonymous relationships  during our period. Rather, our results point to the complementarity of  embeddedness and formality, and suggest an increase over time in the  importance of relationships based on repeated interactions, and a broad  homophily driving merchants to choose fellow merchants as proxies.

   Keywords: proxy form,power of attorney,trust,agency relations,procuration,mandat,confiance

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-01358365&r=soc

4. Who Becomes a Politican?

   Dal Bó, Ernesto (University of California at Berkeley)

   Finan, Frederico (University of California at Berkeley)

   Folke, Olle (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))

   Persson, Torsten (Institute for International Economic Studies)

   Rickne, Johanna (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))  Can a democracy attract competent leaders, while attaining broad  representation? Economic models suggest that free-riding incentives and lower  opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative advantage at entering  political life. Also, if elites have more human capital, selecting on  competence may lead to uneven representation. We examine patterns of  political selection among the universe of municipal politicians in Sweden  using extraordinarily rich data on competence traits and social background  for the entire population. We document four new facts: First, politicians are  on average signi cantly smarter and better leaders than the population they  represent. Second, the representation of social background, whether measured  by intergenerational earnings or social class, is remarkably even. Third,  there is at best a weak tradeo in selection between competence and  representation. Fourth, both material and intrinsic motives matter in  selection, as does screening by political parties.

   Keywords: Political Selection; Political Representation; Family Background; Competence

   JEL: H10 H70

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1133&r=soc

5. Trust-building in international business ventures

   Alexandra Gerbasi (MTS - Management Technologique et Strategique - Grenoble

    École de Management (GEM))

   Dominika Latusek (Department of Management - Kozminski University)

 Purpose: This article investigates collaboration and coordination practices  in the organization whose members come from two countries that differ  dramatically in generalized trust: Poland and the United States.

 Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative field study conducted in Silicon  Valley-based American-Polish start-up joint venture. Findings: There are  three mechanisms can facilitate collaboration in organizations that differ in  generalized trust: frequent interaction that may form a basis for  knowledge-based trust, professional cultures that provide common platform for  communication, and the presence of intermediaries that possess understanding  and ability to communicate of both cultures. Practical implications: The  findings can be applied in the context of offshoring projects in knowledge  intensive industries. Originality/value: Research presented in this paper  investigates collaboration of parties from low-trust and high-trust cultures  within one business venture.

   Keywords: United States,social capital,cross-cultural management,trust,Interorganizational collaboration,software development,Poland

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01137667&r=soc

6. Gender Differences in Compliance: The Role of Social Value Orientation

   Grosch, Kerstin

   Rau, Holger A.

 This paper experimentally analyzes the determinants of compliance in a  cheating game. The results show that men are less compliant than women. We  demonstrate that social value orientation predicts differences in cheating  and explains the gender differences. Individualistic men cheat more than all  social types of both gender.

   Keywords: Experiment, Gender Di erences, Honesty, Social Value Orientation, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Labor and Human Capital, C91, H26,

    J16,

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:gagfdp:245702&r=soc

7. The Concept of ‘Friendship’ in Late 18th – Early 19th Century Russia:

    Social Cohesion Reconsidered

   Maiia Lavrinovich (National Research University Higher School of Economics)  The paper examines social differences within the concept of ‘friendship’ in  late 18th – early 19th century Russia in order to ‘reassemble’ friendship as  a social phenomenon in this period. Ubiquitously, the voluminous  correspondence of the Russian aristocracy is interpreted as “friendly”

 disregarding any social dimension and ignoring the social station of the  correspondents. The 18th century was a critical period in Russia being an age  of radical modernization. New social and cultural models were appropriated  and, as a result of westernization, the Latin tradition was assimilated too.

 In early modern Europe, the concept of ‘friendship’ was applied to allegedly  equal relationships, as the words cliens, patronus, clientela were not in use  any more, but clients were described as amici, or friends by their patrons.

 The paper analyzes the correspondence of several Russian aristocrats with  their clients – social inferiors. The grandees refer to these relations as  ‘friendly’ and call them friendship or amitie (bien sincere or parfait)  emphasizing their value for them. From the letters of their correspondents,  it comes to light that the social inferiors tended to be wary and not to use  these notions assessing their relationships, thus remaining in the conceptual  framework of the patron-client relationships. Under the impact of the  ‘emotional turn’ of early sentimentalism, the concept of friendship, like  that of social cohesion, was used by the grandees as a means to reinterpret  the relationships of dominance in the patron-client relations as voluntary  and predicated on selfless devotion whereas their clients preferred to avoid  sensitivity still resorting to more traditional and apprehensible flattery  and obsequiousness

   Keywords: Russia, 18th century, friendship, correspondence, Alexander Vorontsov, Nikolai Sheremetev, Alexei Malinovskii, social hierarchy, emotional community

   JEL: Z

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:133/hum/2016&r=soc

8. Does Social Interaction Improve Learning Outcomes? Field Evidence from Massive Open Online Education

   Dennis Zhang

   Gad Allon

   Jan Van Mieghem

 This paper studies how service providers can design social interaction among  participants and quantify the causal impact of that interaction on service  quality. We focus on education and analyze whether encouraging social  interaction among students improves learning outcomes in Massive Open Online  Courses (MOOCs), which are a new service delivery channel with universal  access at reduced, if not zero, cost. We analyze three randomized experiments  in a MOOC with more than 30; 317 students from 183 countries. Two experiments  study large-group interaction by encouraging a random subset of students to  visit the course discussion board. The majority of students treated in these  experiments had higher social engagement, higher quiz completion rates, and  higher course grades. Using these treatments as instrumental variables, we  estimate that one additional board visit causally increases the probability  that a student finishes the quiz in the subsequent week by up to 4:3%. The  third experiment studies small-group interaction by encouraging a random  subset of students to conduct one-on-one synchronous discussions. Students  who followed through and actually conducted pairwise discussions increased  their quiz completion rates and quiz scores by 10% in the subsequent week.

 Combining results from these three experiments, we provide recommendations  for designing social interaction mechanisms to improve service quality.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:natura:00574&r=soc

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