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

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1. Trust and Social Control. Sources of cooperation, performance, and stability in informal value transfer systems - Claudius Graebner; Wolfram Elsner; Alexander Lascaux
2. Gender: An Historical Perspective - Giuliano, Paola
3. Adults Behaving Badly: The Effects of Own and Peer Parents’ Incarceration on Adolescent Criminal Activities - Jason Fletcher
4. To Trust is Good, but to Control Is Better: How Investors Discipline Financial Advisors'Activity - Calcagno, Riccardo; Giofré, Maela; Urzì-Brancati, Maria Cesira
5. The Geography of Civic Crowdfunding: Implications for Social Inequality and Donor-Project Dynamics - Daniel A. Brent; Katie Lorah
6. More Giving or More Givers? The Effects of Tax Incentives on Charitable Donations in the UK - Almunia, Miguel; Lockwood, Ben; Scharf, Kimberley
7. Do friends follow each other? FDI network effects in Central Europe - Gabor Bekes; Marta Bisztray
8. Social Interactions, Mechanisms, and Equilibrium: Evidence from a Model of Study Time and Academic Achievement - Tim Conley; Nirav Mehta; Ralph Stinebrickner; Todd Stinebrickner
9. Behavioral Patterns in Conditional Generosity Experiments - Daniela Di Cagno; Arianna Galliera; Werner Güth; Luca Panaccione

1. Trust and Social Control. Sources of cooperation, performance, and stability in informal value transfer systems

   Claudius Graebner (Institute for Institutional and Innovation Economics

    (iino), University of Bremen, Germany)

   Wolfram Elsner (Institute for Institutional and Innovation Economics,

    University of Bremen, Germany)

   Alexander Lascaux (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and

    Public Administration, Moscow, Russia)  We study the functioning of informal value transfer systems (IVTS) with the  example of Hawala. More precisely, we use computational experiments to study  the roles of generalized trust and social control for the stability and  efficiency of IVTS. Previous literature was ambiguous with regard to: (i) how  trust and control should be operationalized formally, (ii) which, if any of  the two, carries a larger relevance for the functioning of IVTS, (iii)  whether (and when) they relate to each other as substitutes or complements,  and (iv) how they interact with a number of other environmental conditions.

 Our experiments suggest answers to all these questions. We show that both  trust and control are necessary, but not sufficient to guarantee the  functioning of Hawala, and that other relevant conditions, such as population  size, interaction density, and forgiveness of the agents, provide important  contexts. Aside from clarifying these questions, we provide a theoretically  grounded operationalization of generalized trust and social control that is  applicable to informal exchange systems in general.

   Keywords: Hawala, Computational experiment, Informal Value Transfer Systems, Institution, Social Control, Trust

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ico:wpaper:62&r=soc

2. Gender: An Historical Perspective

   Giuliano, Paola

 Social attitudes toward women vary significantly across societies. This  chapter reviews recent empirical research on various historical determinants  of contemporary differences in gender roles and gender gaps across societies,  and how these differences are transmitted from parents to children and  therefore persist until today. We review work on the historical origin of  differences in female labor-force participation, fertility, education,  marriage arrangements, competitive attitudes, domestic violence, and other  forms of difference in gender norms. Most of the research illustrates that  differences in cultural norms regarding gender roles emerge in response to  specific historical situations, but tend to persist even after the historical  conditions have changed. We also discuss the conditions under which gender  norms either tend to be stable or change more quickly.

   Keywords: Cultural persistence; Cultural Transmission; Gender

   JEL: J16 N0 Z1

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12183&r=soc

3. Adults Behaving Badly: The Effects of Own and Peer Parents’ Incarceration on Adolescent Criminal Activities

   Jason Fletcher (University of Wisconsin–Madison)  A maturing literature across the social sciences suggests important impacts  of the intergenerational transmission of crime as well as peer effects that  determine youth criminal activities. This paper explores these channels by  examining gender-specific effects of maternal and paternal incarceration from  both own-parents and classmate-parents. This paper also adds to the  literature by exploiting across-cohort, within school exposure to peer parent  incarceration to enhance causal inference. While the intergenerational  correlations of criminal activities are similar by gender  (father-son/mother-son), the results suggest that peer parent incarceration  transmits effects largely along gender lines, which is suggestive of specific  learning mechanisms. Peer maternal incarceration increases adolescent female  criminal activities and reduces male crime and the reverse is true for peer  paternal incarceration. These effects are strongest for youth reports of  selling drugs and engaging in physical violence. In contrast, the effects of  peer parental incarceration on other outcomes, such as GPA, do not vary by  gender.

   Keywords: crime, social spillovers, intergenerational transmission, gender

   JEL: J24 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hka:wpaper:2017-058&r=soc

4. To Trust is Good, but to Control Is Better: How Investors Discipline

    Financial Advisors'Activity

   Calcagno, Riccardo

   Giofré, Maela

   Urzì-Brancati, Maria Cesira (University of Turin)  Using a survey of clients from one of the largest Italian banks, we ?nd that  investors with low level of trust in professional advisors seek ?nancial  counselling, but make their decisions autonomously. We investigate whether  these investors exert some form of control over the recommendations they  receive, and, if so, which one. Investors can push advisors to provide better  recommendations either by asking for a second expert?s opinion, such as in  the case of credence services, or by monitoring closely the advisor?s  activity themselves. We ?nd that three quarters of investors do not exert any  control on advisors. Di¤erent types of ?nancial competence ? self-assessed or  test-based ? serve di¤erent purposes. The investors featuring higher  self-assessed ?nancial competence are more likely to control the advisor?s  activity. The mechanism through which investors exert control over the  advisors? activity depends instead on the investors? degree of test-based  ?nancial literacy. Investors with high ?nancial literacy directly monitor the  advisors?activity. Investors with low ?nancial literacy are more likely to  seek a second professional opinion in support of the recommendations  previously received. Our ?ndings suggest that improving investor ?nancial  knowledge may foster direct control of the advisor?s activity. Moreover,  facilitating the comparison between ?nancial products by standardized and  centralized information may be very e¤ective to protect poorly literate  investors.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uto:dipeco:201718&r=soc

5. The Geography of Civic Crowdfunding: Implications for Social Inequality and Donor-Project Dynamics

   Daniel A. Brent

   Katie Lorah

 Civic crowdfunding combines the power of private crowdfunding with grassroots  organization to directly fund local public projects. This article analyzes  fine scale geographic data on 18,000 donations to roughly 800 campaigns from  a leading civic crowdfunding platform to examine the implications of civic  crowdfunding for inequality and the link between donors and projects. The  neighborhood characteristics of projects, including median household income,  do not impact the ability to raise capital, which addresses a common concern  that civic crowdfunding will exacerbate inequality in neighborhood amenities.

 The average distance of a donor to a project is over 300 miles and the median  distance is 8 miles, indicating that while projects elicit donations from  outside their community local donations are very important. Donors' income  does not influence whether donors contribute to projects in low income or  high income neighborhoods. The findings serve as a guide to future research  on civic crowdfunding and inform how the expansion of this new funding  mechanism can integrate into local government policy.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lsu:lsuwpp:2017-09&r=soc

6. More Giving or More Givers? The Effects of Tax Incentives on Charitable

    Donations in the UK

   Almunia, Miguel

   Lockwood, Ben

   Scharf, Kimberley

 This paper estimates the tax-price elasticity of giving using UK  administrative tax return data, exploiting variation from a large tax reform.

 We estimate both the in- tensive and extensive-margin elasticity, using a  novel instrumental variables strategy. Then, we derive new conditions to  evaluate the welfare consequences of changes in the generosity of the subsidy  to donations. We find a small intensive-margin elasticity of -0.2 and a  substantial extensive-margin elasticity of -0.8, yielding a total elasticity  of about -1. These estimates mask considerable heterogeneity: high-income

 individ- uals respond more on the intensive margin, while the  extensive-margin response is stronger among low-income taxpayers.

   Keywords: Donations; Tax policy; Tax Subsidies for Giving

   JEL: D64 H24 H31

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12191&r=soc

7. Do friends follow each other? FDI network effects in Central Europe

   Gabor Bekes (Institute of Economics Centre for Economic and Regional

    Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Central European University and

    CEPR)

   Marta Bisztray (Institute of Economics Centre for Economic and Regional

    Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences)  A great deal of multinationals receive a bundle of hidden or cash subsidizes  upon investing in a foreign country. Policymakers often argue that a subsidy  today will help locate friends of the investor later on. Using extensive data  on FDI investments, we analyze such patterns. In particular, we investigate  if co-location is more frequent among connected firms such as members of  business groups as well as firms sharing similar background. Focusing on  investments into Central and Eastern European countries we find evidence of  co-location pattern of connected firms.

   Keywords: Foreign direct investment, agglomeration, location choice,

    network effects, business groups

   JEL: F23 R3

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:has:discpr:1719&r=soc

8. Social Interactions, Mechanisms, and Equilibrium: Evidence from a Model of Study Time and Academic Achievement

   Tim Conley (University of Western Ontario)

   Nirav Mehta (University of Western Ontario)

   Ralph Stinebrickner (Berea College)

   Todd Stinebrickner (University of Western Ontario)  We develop and estimate a model of study time choices of students on a social  network. The model is designed to exploit unique data collected in the Berea  Panel Study. Study time data allow us to quantify an intuitive mechanism for  academic social interactions: own study time may depend on friend study time.

 Social network data allow study time choices and resulting academic  achievement to be embedded in an estimable equilibrium framework. New data on  study propensities allow us to directly address potential sorting into  friendships based on typically unobserved determinants of study time. We  develop a speci?cation test that exploits the equilibrium nature of social  interactions and use it to show that our study propensity measures  substantially address endogeneity concerns. We ?nd friend study time strongly  a?ects own study time, and, therefore, student achievement. We examine how  network structure interacts with student characteristics to affect academic  achievement. Sorting on friend characteristics appears important in  explaining variation across students in study time and achievement, and  determines the aggregate achievement level.

   Keywords: Social Networks; Peer Effects; Homophily; Time-use

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uwo:hcuwoc:20177&r=soc

9. Behavioral Patterns in Conditional Generosity Experiments

   Daniela Di Cagno

   Arianna Galliera

   Werner Güth

   Luca Panaccione

 Conditional generosity is explored experimentally by confronting two  participants with the same allocation task and allowing only one of them to  adjust the own generosity level via conditioning on whether the other intends  to be more, respectively less generous. Only one of two allocator candidates  can actually give conditioning on the other’s intended generosity to the  respective responder. We employ the strategy vector method but restrict conditioning to qualitative information only. The focus is on how generosity  inclinations, largely responsible for fair(er) allocation results and  charitable giving, are affected by information that one anonymous other just  intended to be more, respectively less generous.

Participants play three  successive games in the order ultimatum, yes-no and impunity game or (between subjects) in the reversed order. Although only impunity appeals to intrinsic generosity intentions, we test whether conditioning persists when sanctioning  is possible. Based on our data, we distinguish two major types of  participants, one yielding to weakest social influence and another immune to  it. The latter type offers much less: it is greed which, as expected, weakens  social influence.

   Keywords: (Conditional) Generosity, Ultimatum Game, Yes-No Game, Impunity Game, Experiments.

   JEL: C91 C78 D64

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lui:cesare:1701&r=soc

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