In this issue we feature 10 current papers on the theme of social capital, chosen by Fabio Sabatini (Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”):

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1. Creating an efficient culture of cooperation - Ernst Fehr; Tony Williams
2. The accuracy of measures of institutional trust in household surveys: Evidence from the oecd trust database - Santiago González; Conal Smith
3. Roots of Autocracy - Oded Galor; Marc P. B. Klemp
4. Nudging Generosity: Choice Architecture and Cognitive Factors in Charitable Giving - Schulz, Jonathan F.; Thiemann, Petra; Thöni, Christian
5. I (Don't) Like You! But Who Cares? Gender Differences in Same Sex and Mixed Sex Teams - Leonie Gerhards; Michael Kosfeld
6. Laws and Norms: Experimental Evidence with Liability Rules - Bruno Deffains; Claude Fluet; Romain Espinosa
7. An experimental test of reporting systems for deception - Sascha Behnk; Iván Barreda-Tarrazona; Aurora García-Gallego
8. Exposition to Corruption and Political Participation: Evidence from Italian Municipalities - Tommaso Giommoni
9. Beyond "Social Contagion": Associational Diffusion and the Emergence of Cultural Variation - Goldberg, Amir; Stein, Sarah K.
10. Working, Volunteering and Mental Health in the Later Years - Mosca, Irene; Wright, Robert E.

 1. Creating an efficient culture of cooperation

    Ernst Fehr

    Tony Williams

 Throughout human history, informal sanctions by peers were ubiquitous and  played a key role in the enforcement of social norms and the provision of  public goods. However, a considerable body of evidence suggests that informal  peer sanctions cause large collateral damage and efficiency costs. This  raises the question whether peer sanctioning systems exist that avoid these  costs and whether other, more centralized, punishment systems are superior  and will be preferred by the people. Here, we show that efficient peer  sanctioning without much need for costly punishment emerges quickly if we  introduce two relevant features of social life into the experiment: (i)  subjects can migrate across groups with different sanctioning institutions  and (ii) they have the chance to achieve consensus about normatively  appropriate behavior. We also show that subjects universally reject peer  sanctioning without a norm consensus opportunity –an institution that has  hitherto dominated research in this field – in favor of our efficient peer  sanctioning institution or an equally efficient institution where they  delegate the power to sanction to an elected judge. Migration opportunities  and normative consensus building are key to the quick emergence of an  efficient culture of universal cooperation because the more prosocial  subjects populate the two efficient institutions first, elect prosocial  judges (if institutionally possible), and immediately establish a social norm  of high cooperation. This norm appears to guide subjects’ cooperation and  punishment choices, including the virtually complete removal of antisocial  punishment when judges make the sanctioning decision.

    Keywords: Cooperation, punishment, endogenous institutions, public goods

    JEL: D02 D03 D72 H41

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:267&r=soc

 2. The accuracy of measures of institutional trust in household surveys: Evidence from the oecd trust database

    Santiago González (OECD)

    Conal Smith (OECD)

 A key policy concern in recent years has been the decline in levels of trust  by citizen in public institutions. Trust is one of the foundations upon which  the legitimacy and sustainability of political systems are built. It is  crucial to the implementation of a wide range of policies and influences  people’s behavioural responses to such policies. However, despite its  acknowledged importance, trust in public institutions is poorly understood  and is not consistently measured across OECD countries. The OECD Trust  Database brings together information from a wide range of different household  surveys containing measures of trust and combines this with information on  other social and economic outcomes. The size of the database and range of  covariates make it possible to identify the underlying patterns captured by  survey based measures of trust in institutions and systematically test the  accuracy (i.e. reliability and validity) of these measures. Reliability is  tested by examining the consistency of measures of institutional trust across  different surveys and between different waves of the same survey. Validity is  harder to test than reliability. It is however possible to examine the  construct validity of institutional trust measures by looking at whether  these measures show the expected correlation with other social and economic  variables on a cross-country basis. Analysis of item-specific non-response  rates provides important additional information on the face validity of  institutional trust measures.

    Keywords: accuracy, government, household surveys, reliability, trust

    JEL: A13 C46 H11 H83

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:stdaaa:2017/11-en&r=soc

 3. Roots of Autocracy

    Oded Galor

    Marc P. B. Klemp

 Exploiting a novel geo-referenced data set of population diversity across  ethnic groups, this research advances the hypothesis and empirically  establishes that variation in population diversity across human societies, as  determined in the course of the exodus of human from Africa tens of thousands  of years ago, contributed to the di↵erential formation of pre-colonial  autocratic institutions within ethnic groups and the emergence of autocratic  institutions across countries. Diversity has amplified the importance of  institutions in mitigating the adverse e↵ects of non-cohesiveness on  productivity, while contributing to the scope for domination, leading to the  formation of institutions of the autocratic type.

    Keywords: autocracy, economic growth, diversity, institutions, out-of-Africa hypothesis of comparative development

    JEL: O10 O43 Z10

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6427&r=soc

 4. Nudging Generosity: Choice Architecture and Cognitive Factors in Charitable Giving

    Schulz, Jonathan F. (Harvard University)

    Thiemann, Petra (Lund University)

    Thöni, Christian (University of Lausanne)  In an experimental setup we investigate the effect of two different choice  architectures on donation decisions. In the treatment group, subjects can  either specify a charity of their choice, or select one from a list of five  well-known charities; in the control group we do not provide a list. In a  sample of 869 subjects we find a large treatment effect: Offering a list of  default charities doubles the fraction of donors, as well as the revenue for  charities. We find that the treatment intervention particularly affects  subjects who tend to make intuitive choices.

    Keywords: charitable giving, donation, choice architecture, defaults, affective reactions

    JEL: C93 D64 H41 L3

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11097&r=soc

 5. I (Don't) Like You! But Who Cares? Gender Differences in Same Sex and Mixed Sex Teams

    Leonie Gerhards

    Michael Kosfeld

 We study the effect of likability on female and male team behavior in a lab  experiment. Extending a two-player public goods game and a minimum effort  game by an additional pre-play stage that informs team members about their  mutual likability we find that female teams lower their contribution to the  public good in case of low likability, while male teams achieve high levels  of cooperation irrespective of the level of mutual likability. In mixed sex  teams, both females’ and males’ contributions depend on mutual  likability. Similar results are found in the minimum effort game. Our results  offer a new perspective on gender differences in labor market outcomes:

 mutual dislikability impedes team behavior, except in all-male teams.

    Keywords: gender differences, likability, experiment, team behavior

    JEL: C90 J16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6523&r=soc

 6. Laws and Norms: Experimental Evidence with Liability Rules

    Bruno Deffains

    Claude Fluet

    Romain Espinosa

 We conduct an experiment where participants choose between actions that  provide private benefits but may also impose losses on strangers. Three legal  environments are compared: no law, strict liability for the harm caused to  others and an efficiently designed negligence rule where damages are paid  only when the harmful action causes a net social loss. Legal obligations are  either perfectly enforced (Severe Law) or only weakly so (Mild Law),  i.e.,material incentives are then nondeterrent. We investigate how legal  obligations and social norms interact. Our results show that liability rules  strengthen pro-social behavior and suggest that strict liability has a  greater effect than the negligence rule.

    JEL: C91 K13 D03

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2017s-13&r=soc

 7. An experimental test of reporting systems for deception

    Sascha Behnk (Department of Banking and Finance, University of Zurich, Switzerland)

    Iván Barreda-Tarrazona (LEE and Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain)

    Aurora García-Gallego (LEE and Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain)

 We use a repeated sender-receiver game in which sender behavior is revealed  to future counterparts by (i) standardized computer reports or by (ii)  individual reports composed by the receivers, representing a common form of  consumer feedback. Compared to our baseline without reporting, computer  reports reduce deception in all payoff scenarios while the effect of  individually written reports is lower and in some scenarios only marginal.

 This comparably weaker impact can be explained by the senders’ anticipation  of a high number of missing or deficient receiver reports that we find. We  conclude that the precision of a reporting system has a higher importance for  reducing deception than its personal character via individual feedback.

 Surprisingly, the reliability of computer reports is not correctly  anticipated by receivers, who trust individually written reports more in the  beginning and hence seem to back the wrong horse initially.

    Keywords: deception, trust, reporting systems, reputation, experiment

    JEL: D03 D63 K42

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jau:wpaper:2017/11&r=soc

 8. Exposition to Corruption and Political Participation: Evidence from Italian Municipalities

    Tommaso Giommoni

 The aim of this paper is to study the effect of local corruption on political  participation which is mediated by the press. Focusing on Italy, we generate  a daily measure of exposition to local corruption screening articles of main  Italian press agency. Applying an event-study methodology on local elections,  two results emerge. First, corruption exposition reduces citizens participation: voter turnout decreases but characteristics of elected  politicians are not affected; second, politicians participation modifies: number of candidates lowers along with proportion of running freshmen. These  results suggest that corruption exposition produces resignation rather than  retaliation in terms of political participation.

    Keywords: corruption, media, turnout, political selection, electoral competition

    JEL: D72 D73 H70 K42

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6645&r=soc

 9. Beyond "Social Contagion": Associational Diffusion and the Emergence of Cultural Variation

    Goldberg, Amir (Stanford University)

    Stein, Sarah K. (Stanford University)  Network models of diffusion predominantly think about cultural variation as a  product of "social contagion." But culture does not spread like a virus. In  this paper, we propose an alternative explanation which we refer to as  "associational diffusion." Drawing on two insights from research in  cognition--that meaning inheres in cognitive associations between concepts,  and that such perceived associations constrain people's actions--we suggest  that rather than beliefs or behaviors per-se, the things being transmitted  between individuals are perceptions about what beliefs or behaviors are  compatible with one another. We demonstrate that the endogenous emergence of  cultural differentiation can be entirely attributable to social cognition,  and does not necessitate a segregated social network or a preexisting  division into groups. Our results are robust to variation in individuals' levels of conformity.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:stabus:3562&r=soc

10. Working, Volunteering and Mental Health in the Later Years

    Mosca, Irene (Trinity College Dublin)

    Wright, Robert E. (University of Strathclyde)  This paper examines the effect that working for pay and volunteering has on  the mental health of older Irish women and men. Data from four waves of The  Irish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (TILDA) are used. Three measures that  capture different dimensions of mental health are considered. Ordinary least  squares regression estimates suggest that both working for pay and  volunteering have statistically significant and substantially large positive  effects on mental health. However, these effects are less well defined when  fixed effects regression is used. The analysis also suggests that combining  working for pay with volunteering is more beneficial in terms of mental  health than either working for pay or volunteering on their own. That is,  there is something "extra" from engaging in both activities. The estimates  also suggest a possible trade-off between working for pay and volunteering in  terms of mental health benefits. Volunteering may be a "good mental health  substitute" for working for pay. The extent of this substitutability is  particularly important amongst older people, since participation in paid  employment decreases while volunteering increases in older age. Higher levels  of volunteering may compensate for the mental health loss associated with  lower levels of working for pay. If this is the case, policies that promote  volunteering may be cost-effective if they result in higher levels of  self-sufficiency amongst older people.

    Keywords: mental health, working, volunteering, older people

    JEL: I12 J14 J22

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11100&r=soc

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