In this issue we feature 19 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.

1. Social capital and large-scale agricultural investments: An experimental investigation in Zambia - Khadjavi, Menusch; Sipangule, Kacana; Thiele, Rainer
2. Bridging or Bonding? Preferences for Redistribution and Social Capital in Russia - Ekaterina Borisova; Andrei Govorun; Denis Ivanov
3. Information Disclosure and Cooperation in a Finitely-repeated Dilemma: Experimental Evidence - Kamei, Kenju
4. Social comparison nudges: Guessing the norm increases charitable giving - Bartke, Simon; Friedl, Andreas; Gelhaar, Felix; Reh, Laura
5. Delegation to workers across countries and industries : social capital and coordination needs matter - Asuyama, Yoko
6. 'Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.' A BHPS study of the interaction between giving and welfare - Lorna Zischka; Mark Casson; Marina Della Giusta
7. Gender and cooperative preferences on five continents - Furtner, Nadja C.; Kocher, Martin G.; Martinsson, Peter; Matzat, Dominik; Wollbrant, Conny
8. Co-financing agreements and reciprocity: When 'no deal' is a good deal - Dooseok Jang; Amrish Patel; Martin Dufwenberg
9. The invisible hand of informal (educational) communication!?: Social capital considerations on Twitter conversations among teachers - Rehm, Martin; Notten, Ad
10. Wage Determination in Social Occupations: The Role of Individual Social Capital - Hotchkiss, Julie L.; Rupasingha, Anil
11. In-group and Out-group Biases in the Marketplace: A Field Experiment during the World Cup - Sang-Hyun Kim; Fernanda L. Lopez de Leon
12. Cultural Determinants of Gender Roles: Pragmatism Is an Important Factor behind Gender Equality Attitudes among Children of Immigrants - Ljunge, Martin
13. Origins and implications of family structure across Italian provinces in historical perspective - Pierluigi Conzo; Arnstein Aassve; Giulia Fuochi; Letizia Mencarini
14. The Interaction between Prosocial (Giving) Behaviours and Social Cohesion - Lorna Zischka
15. Helping without Trusting: Disentangling Prosocial Behaviours - Lorna Zischka; Marina Della Giusta
16. Does social interaction make bad policies even worse? Evidence from renewable energy subsidies - Inhoffen, Justus; Siemroth, Christoph; Zahn, Philipp
17. Grading On A Curve: When Having Good Peers Is Not Good - Caterina Calsamiglia; Annalisa Loviglio
18. More than Just Friends? School Peers and Adult Interracial Relationships - Merlino, Luca Paolo; Steinhardt, Max F.; Wren-Lewis, Liam
19. Speaking to the people? Money, trust, and central bank legitimacy in the age of quantitative easing - Braun, Benjamin

 1. Social capital and large-scale agricultural investments: An experimental investigation in Zambia

    Khadjavi, Menusch

    Sipangule, Kacana

    Thiele, Rainer

 Large-scale agricultural investments (LSAIs) typically depend on strong  formal institutions and market-oriented intensive farming, whereas informal  institutions tend to characterize the traditional villages located around  them. We investigate changes to social capital in such villages when LSAIs  materialize in their vicinity. Specifically, we employ a lab-in-the-field and  a natural field experiment to elicit cooperation levels in villages that lie  in the direct proximity of two LSAIs and compare them to villages further  away. Our results reveal more cooperative outcomes for villages around the  LSAIs. Smallholders who have worked on large-scale farms also show greater  levels of cooperation than those who have no such work experience. Moreover,  villages closer to the LSAIs demonstrate a higher propensity to share the  public good provided in the natural field experiment. Taken together, these  results suggest that beyond direct effects on employment, LSAIs yield  positive externalities on cooperation, which are likely to be driven by  increased exposure to more market-oriented forms of agriculture.

    Keywords: social capital,market exposure,cooperation,large-scale agricultural investments,field experiment,smallholders,Zambia

    JEL: C93 O10 O13 P14 Q12 Q15

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2056&r=soc

 2. Bridging or Bonding? Preferences for Redistribution and Social Capital in Russia

    Ekaterina Borisova (International center for the study of institutions and development, National research university higher school of economics (Moscow))

    Andrei Govorun (International center for the study of institutions and development, National research university higher school of economics (Moscow))

    Denis Ivanov (International center for the study of institutions and development, National research university higher school of economics (Moscow))

 Does bridging or bonding social capital matter for redistribution  preferences? Existing literature demonstrates causal link between measures of  social capital and such preferences but does it mostly for developed  countries with good enforcement of formal rules and without a distinction  between two completely different types of social capital. We argue that  welfare state relies on contributions from an immense number of anonymous  citizens, thus attitudes towards strangers, i.e. generalized trust and  solidarity should be salient. Using two surveys of about 34,000 and 37,000  Russians we prove this proposition showing the importance of the bridging  type but not the bonding one. Instrumenting social capital with education,  climate and distance from Moscow we deal with endogeneity concerns.

 Additionally we claim that connection between social capital and  redistribution preferences for less developed countries such as Russia could  be similar to developed countries

    Keywords: preferences for redistribution; inequality; social capital; trust; corruption; Russia

    JEL: Z13 H10

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ial:wpaper:5/2016&r=soc

 3. Information Disclosure and Cooperation in a Finitely-repeated Dilemma: Experimental Evidence

    Kamei, Kenju

 A large volume of theoretical and experimental studies have suggested that  making information on people’s past behaviors visible to others may lead to  the evolution of cooperation in finitely-repeated environments. But, do  people endogenously cooperate with randomly-matched peers by revealing their  past when they have an option to hide it? This paper experimentally shows  that cooperation does not evolve in a random-matching environment because a  large fraction of people do not choose to reveal their past behavior.

 However, when a costly sorting mechanism (where disclosers are matched with  other disclosers; and likewise non-disclosers with other non-disclosers) is  present, a stable number of subjects decide to costly disclose their past to  join the reputation community and cooperate with other disclosers. Our study  at the same time shows that when the sorting process is free, the high  efficiency in the reputation community decreases as strategic subjects tend  to join the reputation community and attempt to exploit cooperators. These  findings suggest an important role of costly sorting mechanisms in the  formation of communities (including online platforms) in order for people to  sustain a high level of cooperation norms.

    Keywords: experiment, cooperation, finitely-repeated dilemma, repeated games, reputation

    JEL: C73 C9 D0 H41

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:75100&r=soc

 4. Social comparison nudges: Guessing the norm increases charitable giving

    Bartke, Simon

    Friedl, Andreas

    Gelhaar, Felix

    Reh, Laura

 Social comparison nudges that employ descriptive norms were found to increase  charitable giving. This paper finds that individuals who receive a  descriptive norm donate significantly more when they have to guess the  descriptive norm beforehand. We argue that guessing draws attention to the  norm and therefore increases its effectiveness. Our results suggest that the  effectiveness of nudges that use descriptive norms depends on how the a  priori beliefs about the descriptive norm are updated.

    Keywords: social comparison nudge,attention,field experiment,charitable giving,social norms

    JEL: C93 D03 D64 H4

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2058&r=soc

 5. Delegation to workers across countries and industries : social capital and coordination needs matter

    Asuyama, Yoko

 The degree of delegating authority to non-managerial and non-supervisory  workers substantially varies across countries and industries. By examining  worker-level data from 14 countries, I empirically explain this variation by  region-specific social capital that proxies workers' degree of  self-centeredness and the industry-specific need for coordination. The  empirical results of this study confirm the theoretical predictions by Alonso  et al. (2008) for the first time: the negative association between  coordination needs and decentralization is mitigated in regions with lower  self-centeredness of workers. In particular, when self-centeredness of  workers (respectively, need for coordination) is very low, the degree of  delegation is always high regardless of the level of the need for  coordination (self-centeredness of workers). Positive associations between  delegation and its benefits, including job satisfaction, wages (proxy for  higher productivity), and skill upgrading of workers, are also found. These  results imply that people's degree of self-centeredness affects a country's  economic development patterns by changing the degree of decentralization and  its benefits.

    Keywords: Industrial management, Human resources, Coordination, Decentralization, Delegation, PIAAC, Social Capital, Trust

    JEL: L22 L23 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper620&r=soc

 6. 'Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.' A BHPS study of the interaction between giving and welfare

    Lorna Zischka (Department of Economics, University of Reading)

    Mark Casson (Department of Economics, University of Reading)

    Marina Della Giusta (Department of Economics, University of Reading)  This paper analyses the interaction between individual giving and individual  welfare. ‘Giving’ includes volunteering, engagement in community groups and  hospitality. ‘Welfare’ includes life-satisfaction, trust, liking for one’s  neighbourhood and crime fears. From British longitudinal data, time lags were  used to establish the direction of causality. A two-way process was

 identified: people who were part of giving networks in the first 5 years of  the study became better off by the end of 10 years, but also being better off  made it more likely that people increased their giving over time. The  existence of lags in both equations makes the system dynamic, suggesting that  a favourable social environment cues prosocial behaviours, and these  prosocial behaviours then go on to maintain and improve the social  environment. The existence of giving behaviours indicates the prosocial  nature of civic sector interactions, and these contribute to welfare through  the cycle of response and counter-response.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2016-10&r=soc

 7. Gender and cooperative preferences on five continents

    Furtner, Nadja C. (University of Munich, Munich, Germany)

    Kocher, Martin G. (University of Munich, Munich, Germany)

    Martinsson, Peter (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

    Matzat, Dominik (University of Munich, Munich, Germany)

    Wollbrant, Conny (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

 Evidence of gender differences in cooperation in social dilemmas is  inconclusive. This paper experimentally elicits unconditional contributions,  a contribution vector (cooperative preferences), and beliefs about the level  of others’ contributions in variants of the public goods game. We show that  existing inconclusive results can be understood and completely explained when  controlling for beliefs and underlying cooperative preferences. Robustness  checks based on data from around 450 additional independent observations  around the world confirm our main empirical results: Women are significantly  more often classified as conditionally cooperative than men, while men are  more likely to be free riders. Beliefs play an important role in shaping  unconditional contributions, and they seem to be more malleable or sensitive  to subtle cues for women than for men.

    Keywords: Public goods; conditional cooperation; gender; experiment

    JEL: C91 D64 H41

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0677&r=soc

 8. Co-financing agreements and reciprocity: When 'no deal' is a good deal

    Dooseok Jang (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

    Amrish Patel (University of East Anglia)

    Martin Dufwenberg (University of Arizona)  Institutions for co-financing agreements often exist to encourage public good  investment. Can such frameworks deliver maximal investment when agents are  motivated by reciprocity? We demonstrate that indeed they can, but not in the  way one might expect. If maximal investment is impossible in the absence of  the institution and public good returns are high, then an agreement signed by  all parties cannot lead to full investment. However, if all parties reject  the co-financing agreement, then an informal deal to invest can lead to full  investment. Agreement institutions may thus do more than just facilitate the  signing of formal agreements; they may play a critical role in igniting  informal cooperation underpinned by reciprocity.

    Keywords: co-financing agreements, informal agreements, public goods, reciprocity

    JEL: C72 D03 F53 H41

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uea:ueaeco:2016_12&r=soc

 9. The invisible hand of informal (educational) communication!?: Social capital considerations on Twitter conversations among teachers

    Rehm, Martin (UNU-MERIT, and University Duisburg–Essen)

    Notten, Ad (UNU-MERIT, and Maastricht University)  Twitter can contribute to the continuous professional development of teachers  by initiating and fostering informal learning. Social capital theory can aid  to analyse the underlying communication processes and outcomes. Yet, previous  research has largely neglected teachers and the role of social capital on  Twitter. The present study addresses this shortcoming by analysing a hashtag  conversation among German speaking teachers. Using social network analysis,  we are able to show the relevance of the structural dimension of social  capital in Twitter conversations among teachers.

    Keywords: informal learning, teacher professional development, social capital, social network analysis, social media

    JEL: I21 I28 D83 D85 O33 O35

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2016052&r=soc

10. Wage Determination in Social Occupations: The Role of Individual Social Capital

    Hotchkiss, Julie L. (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta)

    Rupasingha, Anil (U.S. Department of Agriculture)  We make use of predicted social and civic activities (social capital) to  account for selection into "social" occupations. Individual selection  accounts for more than the total difference in wages observed between social  and nonsocial occupations. The role that individual social capital plays in  selecting into these occupations and the importance of selection in  explaining wage differences across occupations is similar for both men and  women. We make use of restricted data from the 2000 decennial census and the

 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey. Individual social capital is  instrumented by distance-weighted surrounding census tract characteristics.

    Keywords: social capital; wage differentials; occupational choice; switching regression; nonpublic data; factor analysis

    JEL: C34 J24 J31

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedawp:2016-12&r=soc

11. In-group and Out-group Biases in the Marketplace: A Field Experiment during the World Cup

    Sang-Hyun Kim (University of East Anglia)

    Fernanda L. Lopez de Leon (University of Kent)  We investigate the effects of group identity on discrimination by conducting  an audit study in electronics markets in Sao Paulo, Brazil during the 2014  Brazil World Cup (WC). To manipulate the visibility of buyers? group  membership we made them wear shirts of national football teams, and exploit  the outcomes of the WC matches, which arguably affected the salience of  sellers?group identity. Although we ?nd that foreigners are overcharged, we  do not detect discrimination against buyers wearing a rival team shirt. In  contrast, we do detect in-group market favouritism (i.e., lower prices)  towards buyers wearing the Brazil shirt when Brazil had won a match in the  very recent past. Our analysis rejects the explanation that sellers?behaviour  were always motivated by economic pro?ts. Instead, the results indicate  taste-based discrimination (Becker, 1957) and shed light on the ways in which  in-group and out-group biases occur in market outcomes.

    Keywords: in-group and out-group discrimination, bargaining in the marketplace

    JEL: C93 D71 J15

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yon:wpaper:2016rwp-100&r=soc

12. Cultural Determinants of Gender Roles: Pragmatism Is an Important Factor behind Gender Equality Attitudes among Children of Immigrants

    Ljunge, Martin (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))  This paper presents evidence of how attitudes toward gender roles in the home  and market are shaped by Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions. Children of  immigrants in a broad set of European countries with ancestry from across the  world are studied. Individuals are examined within country of residence using  variation in cultural dimensions across countries of ancestry. The approach  focuses attention on how gender roles are shaped across generations within  families. Both influences on the father’s and mother’s side are studied.

 Ancestry from more masculine cultures shape more traditional gender roles on  both parents’ sides. On the father side more pragmatic cultures foster gender  equality on the mother’s side power distance promote equality attitudes,  although this influence differs markedly between daughters and sons.

 Pragmatism is in several circumstances the strongest influence on gender  norms.

    Keywords: Gender roles; intergenerational transmission; Hofstede cultural dimensions; Gender

    JEL: D13 D83 J16 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1137&r=soc

13. Origins and implications of family structure across Italian provinces in historical perspective

    Pierluigi Conzo

    Arnstein Aassve

    Giulia Fuochi

    Letizia Mencarini

 The paper provides a framework of how culture affects citizens' subjective  well-being. According to self-determination theory, well-being is driven by  the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness  and competence. We assess if and to what extent generalized trust and the  values of obedience and respect influence the EuropeansÕ satisfaction of  these needs, controlling for income and education. We find positive impact of  generalized morality (i.e. high trust and respect, low obedience). Results  are robust to different checks for endogeneity, including instrumental  variable regressions at country, regional and individual level as well as to  panel-data estimations.

    Keywords: self-determination, culture, trust, subjective well-being, happiness, life satisfaction

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:don:donwpa:093&r=soc

14. The Interaction between Prosocial (Giving) Behaviours and Social Cohesion

    Lorna Zischka (Department of Economics, University of Reading)  A controlled experiment establishes that differences in relational proximity  can evoke or suppress a willingness to give to an unrelated cause. Four  treatment groups underwent the same set of exercises but two in a closer  relational environment and two in a more distant relational environment. Half  of the subjects in each relational environment further received an  unannounced doubling of pay. On exit, all participants had the option to give  to charity. The experiment showed that the charitable giving was driven by  relational factors, not by pay. We can learn that pro-social (pro-giving)  inclinations interact with the wider social environment, and that these  complex relational parameters may be evaluated by easy-to-measure giving  patterns.

    Keywords: giving, experiment, pro-social, charity, endowment, social capital

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2016-07&r=soc

15. Helping without Trusting: Disentangling Prosocial Behaviours

    Lorna Zischka (Department of Economics, University of Reading)

    Marina Della Giusta (Department of Economics, University of Reading)  na

    Keywords: giving, prosocial attitudes, social cohesion, trust

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2016-11&r=soc

16. Does social interaction make bad policies even worse? Evidence from renewable energy subsidies

    Inhoffen, Justus

    Siemroth, Christoph

    Zahn, Philipp

 Minimum prices above the market level can lead to ineffcient production and  oversupply. We investigate whether this effect is even more pronounced when  decision makers are influenced by their social environment. Using data of  minimum prices for renewable energy production in Germany, we analyze if  individual decisions to install solar panels are affected by the investment  decisions of others. We implement a propensity score matching routine on  municipality level and estimate that existing panels in the municipality  increase the probability and number of further installations considerably,  even in areas with minimal solar potential. This social effect is stronger in  areas with more solar potential and less unemployment. A higher number of  existing panels and more concentrated installations increase the social  effect further. We discuss policy implications of these social effects.

    Keywords: EEG , Minimum Prices , Peer Effects , Public Policy , Renewable Energy , Social Interaction , Social Effect , Social Multiplier , Solar

     Power , Solar Panels , Subsidy

    JEL: H23 L14 Q42 Q48 Q58

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mnh:wpaper:40977&r=soc

17. Grading On A Curve: When Having Good Peers Is Not Good

    Caterina Calsamiglia (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

    Annalisa Loviglio (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and Barcelona GSE)  Student access to education levels, tracks or bachelor specialties is usually  determined by their previous performance, measured either by internal exams,  designed and graded by teachers in school, or external exams, designed and  graded by central authorities. We say teachers in school grade on a curve  whenever having better performing peers harms the grade obtained and hence  the evaluation of a given student. We use rich administrative records from  public schools in Catalonia to provide evidence that teachers indeed grade on  a curve, leading to negative peer effects. We find suggestive evidence that  these negative effects impact school choice only the year when internal  grades have an impact on future prospects.

    Keywords: peer effects, grades, School Choice

    JEL: I21 I28 H75

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2016-020&r=soc

18. More than Just Friends? School Peers and Adult Interracial Relationships

    Merlino, Luca Paolo (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

    Steinhardt, Max F. (Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg)

    Wren-Lewis, Liam (Paris School of Economics)  This paper investigates the impact of individuals' school peers on their  adult romantic relationships. In particular, we consider the effect of  quasi-random variation in the share of black students within an individual's  cohort on the percentage of adults' cohabiting partners that are black. We  find that more black peers leads to more relationships with blacks later in  life. The results are similar whether relationships begun near or far from  school, suggesting that the racial mix of schools has an important and  persistent impact on racial attitudes.

    Keywords: assortative matching, romantic relationships, race

    JEL: J12 J15 J16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10319&r=soc

19. Speaking to the people? Money, trust, and central bank legitimacy in the age of quantitative easing

    Braun, Benjamin

 Financial upheaval and unconventional monetary policies have made money a  salient political issue. This provides a rare opportunity to study the  under-appreciated role of monetary trust in the politics of central bank  legitimacy which, for the first time in decades, appears fragile. While  research on central bank communication with "the markets" abounds, little is  known about if and how central bankers speak to "the people." A closer look  at the issue immediately reveals a paradox: while a central bank's legitimacy  hinges on it being perceived as acting in line with the dominant folk theory  of money, this theory accords poorly with how money actually works. How  central banks cope with this ambiguity depends on the monetary situation.

 Using the Bundesbank and the European Central Bank as examples, this paper  shows that under inflationary macro-economic conditions, central bankers  willingly nourished the folk-theoretical notion of money as a quantity under  the direct control of the central bank. By contrast, the Bank of England's  recent refutation of the folk theory of money suggests that deflationary  pressures and rapid monetary expansion have fundamentally altered the  politics of monetary trust and central bank legitimacy.

 Die durch die Finanzkrise und die unkonventionellen Maßnahmen der  Zentralbanken bewirkte Politisierung des Geldes erlaubt einen seltenen  Einblick in den Zusammenhang zwischen Geldvertrauen und  Zentralbanklegitimität. Die Kommunikation von Zentralbanken mit der breiten  Öffentlichkeit - im Gegensatz zur gut erforschten Kommunikation mit  Finanzmärkten bisher weitgehend vernachlässigt - sieht sich mit einem Dilemma  konfrontiert. Einerseits hängt die Legitimität der Zentralbank davon ab, ob  ihr Handeln den Maximen entspricht, die sich aus der in der Öffentlichkeit  vorherrschenden Theorie des Geldes ableiten. Andererseits weicht diese  Theorie in wichtigen Punkten von der tatsächlichen Funktionsweise des  Geldsystems ab. Wie Zentralbanken mit diesem Dilemma umgehen, hängt von der  allgemeinen geldpolitischen Situation ab. Anhand der Beispiele der Deutschen  Bundesbank und der Europäischen Zentralbank wird argumentiert, dass  Zentralbanker unter inflationären Bedingungen die Öffentlichkeit gerne in dem  Glauben lassen, die Geldmenge sei vollständig von der Zentralbank  kontrolliert. Die außergewöhnliche Initiative der Bank of England, die  Öffentlichkeit von der Irrtümlichkeit dieser Vorstellung zu überzeugen, zeigt  hingegen, dass deflationärer Druck und rapide geldpolitische Expansion das  diskursive Verhältnis zwischen Geldvertrauen und Zentralbanklegitimität  grundlegend verändert haben.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:1612&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 >.