In this issue we feature 11 current papers on the theme of social capital, chosen by Fabio Sabatini (Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”):

1. The Economic Preferences of Cooperative Managers - Guillermo Alves; Pablo Blanchard; Gabriel Burdín; Mariana Chávez; Andrés Dean
2. Transparency and Trust in Government: Evidence from a Survey Experiment - Alessandro, Martín; Cardinale Lagomarsino, Bruno; Scartascini, Carlos; Torrealday, Jerónimo
3. Trust, investment and competition: theory and evidence from German car manufacturers - Giacomo Calzolari; Leonardo Felli; Johannes Koenen; Giancarlo Spagnolo; Konrad O. Stahl
4. Mission of the company, prosocial attitudes and job preferences: a discrete choice experiment - Arjan Non; Ingrid Rohde; Andries de Grip; Thomas Dohmen
5. The Effect of Social Interactions on Exporting Activities: Evidence from Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises in rural Vietnam - SHIMAMOTO Daichi; Yu Ri KIM; TODO Yasuyuki
6. Are the extreme poor more trusting? Social capital within a homeless community in eastern Connecticut - Fiala, Nathan; Krumel, Thomas P. Jr.; Riva, Leticia
7. Using Social Connections and Financial Incentives to Solve Coordination Failure: A Quasi-Field Experiment in India’s Manufacturing Sector - Afridi, Farzana; Dhillon, Amrita; Li, Sherry Xin; Sharma, Swati
8. On Trust Dynamics of Economic Growth - Shah, Syed Sibghatullah
9. Interactive social distance and trust: Different measuring approaches among semi-nomadic pastoralists in Northern Kenya - Parlasca, Martin C.; Hermann, Daniel; Mubhoff, Oliver
10. The gender gap in informal child care: theory and some evidence from Italy - Barigozzi, Francesca; Cremer, Helmuth; Monfardini, Chiara
11. Roots of Tolerance among Second-generation Immigrants - Berggren, Niclas; Ljunge, Martin; Nilsson, Therese

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1. The Economic Preferences of Cooperative Managers
Guillermo Alves (CAF, Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina); Pablo
Blanchard (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias
Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía); Gabriel Burdín
(The University of Leeds); Mariana Chávez (Universidad de la República
(Uruguay). Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto
de Economía); Andrés Dean (Universidad de la República (Uruguay). Facultad
de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Instituto de Economía)

A growing body of research has been investigating the role of management
practices and managerial behaviour in conventional private firms and public
sector organizations. However, little is known about managers’ behavioural
profile in noninvestor-owned firms. This paper aims to fill this gap by
providing a comprehensive behavioural characterization of managers employed
in cooperatives. We gathered incentive-compatible measures of risk
preferences, time preferences, reciprocity, altruism, and trust from 196
Uruguayan managers (half of them employed in worker cooperatives) and 92
first-year undergraduate students. To do this, we conducted a high-stakes
lab-in-the-field experiment in which participants played a series of online
experimental games and made incentivised decisions. The average payoff in
the experiment was approximately 2.5 times higher than the average local
managerial wage in the private sector. Our key findings are that (1) the
fraction of risk loving subjects is lower among co-op managers compared to
conventional managers, and (2) co-op managers appear to be more altruistic
than their conventional counterparts. Interestingly, we do not observe
significant differences between the two groups across other preference
domains, such as impatience, trust, and reciprocity.
JEL: C90 D81 J54
Keywords: risk-aversion, time preferences, altruism, reciprocity, trust,
lab-in-the-field experiment, managers, cooperatives
Date: 2019–05
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulr:wpaper:dt-08-19&r=soc

2. Transparency and Trust in Government: Evidence from a Survey Experiment
Alessandro, Martín; Cardinale Lagomarsino, Bruno; Scartascini, Carlos;
Torrealday, Jerónimo

Does providing information improve citizens’ perception about government
transparency? Does all information matter the same for shaping perceptions
about the government? This paper addresses these questions in the context of
an online randomized survey experiment conducted in Argentina. Results show
that providing information to citizens matters for shaping perceptions about
transparency, and the content of the information matters for affecting the
evaluation people make about the government. Those who received a “positive”
treatment (showing that the government was over-performing on its promises)
increased their trust in the government more than those who received a
“negative” treatment (showing that the government was underperforming). The
evidence highlights that the channel between transparency and trust may be
mediated by the performance of the government.
JEL: C83 H11 D83 H40 C38
Date: 2019–06
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:9496&r=soc

3. Trust, investment and competition: theory and evidence from German car
manufacturers - Giacomo Calzolari; Leonardo Felli; Johannes Koenen; Giancarlo Spagnolo;
Konrad O. Stahl

Based on data from a comprehensive benchmarking study on buyer-supplier
relationships in the German automotive industry, we show that more trust in
a relationship is associated with higher idiosyncratic investment by
suppliers and better part quality - but also with more competition among
suppliers. Both associations hold only for parts involving comparatively
unsophisticated technology, and disappear for parts involving sophisticated
technology. We rationalize all these observations by means of a relational
contracting model of repeated procurement with non-contractible,
buyer-specific investments. In relationships involving higher trust, buyers
are able to induce higher investment and more intense competition among
suppliers - but only when the buyer has the bargaining power. This ability
disappears when the bargaining power resides with the supplier(s).
JEL: D86 L14 L62 O34
Keywords: relational contracts, hold-up, buyer-supplier contracts,
bargaining power
Date: 2019
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7680&r=soc

4. Mission of the company, prosocial attitudes and job preferences: a
discrete choice experiment
Arjan Non; Ingrid Rohde; Andries de Grip; Thomas Dohmen

We conduct a discrete choice experiment to investigate how the mission of
high-tech companies affects job attractiveness and induces self-selection of
science and engineering graduates with respect to their prosocial attitudes.
We characterize mission by whether or not the company combines its profit
motive with a mission on innovation or corporate social responsibility
(CSR). Furthermore, we vary job design (e.g. autonomy) and contractible job
attributes (e.g. job security). We find that companies with a mission on
innovation or CSR are considered more attractive. Women and individuals who
are more altruistic and less competitive feel particularly attracted to such
companies.
JEL: J81 J82 M52
Keywords: Mission of the company, sorting, discrete choice experiment, job
characteristics, social preferences disclosure
Date: 2019–06
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2019_100&r=soc

5. The Effect of Social Interactions on Exporting Activities: Evidence
from Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises in rural Vietnam
SHIMAMOTO Daichi; Yu Ri KIM; TODO Yasuyuki

This study examines the effect of social interactions on exporting
activities of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in
traditional apparel and textile clusters in Vietnam. To deal with
econometric issues due to the reflection problem of Manski and endogeneity
of network formation, we apply the estimation method developed by Bramoullé
et al. (2009). Specifically, we eliminate the sub-network fixed effects
using within transformation and instrument the average share of exports
among peers of the focal firm by attributes of its peers' peers. This method
enables us to identify the effects of exporting activities of the focal
firm's peers on its own exporting activities (the endogenous effect
according to Manski) and the effect of its peers' attributes (the exogenous
effect). We find that peers' export share has a negative and significant
effect on own export share, suggesting that the negative competition effect
surpasses the positive learning effect. We also find that firms are
encouraged to export by their large peers, possibly because firms can obtain
technology spillovers from large peers and thus can be productive enough to
start exporting.
Date: 2019–03
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:19020&r=soc

6. Are the extreme poor more trusting? Social capital within a homeless
community in eastern Connecticut
Fiala, Nathan; Krumel, Thomas P. Jr.; Riva, Leticia

The extreme poor in America face significant problems in their daily lives.
We explore the role of social capital in a homeless community in eastern
Connecticut. While researchers have studied social capital in homeless
populations using qualitative methods, there is very little quantitative
evidence of if or how well the homeless trust other homeless people or are
trusted by the nonhomeless in their communities. We explore the questions of
altruism and trust within and between homeless people using behavioral games
commonly used in economic research. We find that individuals currently
experiencing homelessness are more trusting in general, compared to
individuals not currently experiencing homelessness. We also find that those
who are not currently homeless, but have been in the past, are more trusting
of the homeless population than the non-homeless. We argue that these
results have important policy implications and that economists and other
social scientists should work more with the extreme poor to understand their
constraints and needs.
Keywords: Food Security and Poverty, Institutional and Behavioral Economics
Date: 2019
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:ucozwp:290141&r=soc

7. Using Social Connections and Financial Incentives to Solve
Coordination Failure: A Quasi-Field Experiment in India’s Manufacturing
Sector
Afridi, Farzana (Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi); Dhillon, Amrita
(King’s College London); Li, Sherry Xin (University of Arkansas); Sharma,
Swati (Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi)

Production processes are often organized in teams, yet there is limited
evidence on whether and how social connections and financial incentives
affect productivity in tasks that require coordination among workers. We
simulate assembly line production in a lab-in-the-field experiment in which
workers exert real effort in a minimum-effort game in teams whose members
are either socially connected or unconnected and are paid according to the
group output. We find that group output increases by 18% and coordination
improves by 30-39% when workers are socially connected with their
co-workers. Connected groups also coordinate better when we introduce a lump
sum bonus, suggesting that financial and social incentives can be
complementary in this setting. These findings can plausibly be explained by
trust between co-workers in socially connected teams.
Keywords: caste-based networks, social incentives, financial incentives,
minimum effort game, coordination, trust JEL Classification: C93, D20,
D22, D24, J33
Date: 2019
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:417&r=soc

8. On Trust Dynamics of Economic Growth
Shah, Syed Sibghatullah

Trust among individuals in society may have various economic and social
implications. Though, worldwide data on economic growth rarely consider
trust as an ingredient in manipulating economic outcomes. Thus, we include
trust instigating from individual, affecting community and state thus,
forming trust-based economy. In order to explore the relationship of trust
with growth and its benefits implications, this study suggests a model which
is validated by Markov process. Consequently, results indicate significant
impact of trust on economic growth by achieving convergence in very few
iterations in the case of trust-based economy. On the other hand, economy
with lowest trust level shows delayed convergence and takes around 4 times
more iterations to attain equilibrium. Additionally, socio-economic benefits
are more visible in a trust-based economy.
JEL: C15 C53 D71 E21 H20 O47 Z10 Z13
Keywords: Trust, Markov process, Equilibrium, Convergence, Economic Growth
Date: 2019–05–23
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:94095&r=soc

9. Interactive social distance and trust: Different measuring approaches
among semi-nomadic pastoralists in Northern Kenya
Parlasca, Martin C.; Hermann, Daniel; Mubhoff, Oliver

Trust is an essential part of economic interactions. Nearly all activities
involving the exchange of goods or services require at least some degree of
mutual confidence. Until today some of the lowest levels of social trust are
found in sub-Saharan Africa, especially among pastoral communities. However,
there is still high uncertainty about extend and drivers of trust in
pastoral populations. In this study we analyze trust of 402 semi-nomadic
pastoralists living in Turkana County, Northern Kenya using both
incentivized experiments and survey trust questions. In particular, we
measure the degree in which trust diminishes as interactive social distance
increases by playing a trust game and randomly pairing respondents with a
fellow villager, a pastoralist from a neighboring village, or a city dweller
from the county’s capital. We find that trust towards fellow villagers is
statistically significantly larger than trust towards city dwellers from the
county capital. Survey responses also indicate that pastoralists place more
trust in their fellow villagers than in pastoralists from neighboring
villages, while behavior in the experiment does not show any statistically
significant differences between these two groups. To overcome the trust
barriers identified in this study, we suggest policy makers and
practitioners that offer extension services for pastoralists to involve
locally respected and trusted agents.
Keywords: Public Economics
Date: 2019–04–15
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aesc19:289669&r=soc

10. The gender gap in informal child care: theory and some evidence from
Italy
Barigozzi, Francesca; Cremer, Helmuth; Monfardini, Chiara

Our model studies couples' time allocation and career choices, which are
affected by a social norm on gender roles in the family. Parents can provide
two types of informal child care: basic care (feeding, changing children,
baby-sitting) and quality care (activities that stimulate children's social
and cognitive skills). We obtain the following main results. Traditional
mothers provide some informal basic care, whereas career mothers purchase
full time formal basic care in the market. Informal basic care is too large
and the group of career mothers is too small because of the social norm.
Informal quality care is increasing in the couple's income and is provided
in larger amount by mothers. We test the model's predictions for Italy using
the most recent ISTAT 'Use of Time' survey. In line with the model, mothers
devote more time than fathers to both basic and quality informal care; more
educated parents devote more time to quality informal care than less
educated parents; more educated mothers spend more time in the labor market
than less educated mothers.
JEL: D13 H23 J16 J22
Keywords: Social norms; basic and quality child care; women's career
choices; gender gaps
Date: 2019–06
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:123085&r=soc

11. Roots of Tolerance among Second-generation Immigrants
Berggren, Niclas (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN));
Ljunge, Martin (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN));
Nilsson, Therese (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN))

Tolerance – respecting individual choice and differences among people – is a
prominent feature of modern European culture. That immigrants embrace this
kind of liberal value is arguably important for integration, a central
policy goal. We provide a rigorous study of what factors in the ancestral
countries of second-generation immigrants – including formal and informal
institutions – that predict their level of tolerance towards gay people.
Using the epidemiological method allows us to rule out reverse causality.
Out of the 46 factors examined, one emerges as very robust: a Muslim
background. Tolerance is lower the larger the share of Muslims in the
country from which the parents emigrated. An instrumental-variable analysis
shows that the main mechanism is not through the individual being a Muslim
but through the individual being highly religious. Two additional attitudes
among people in the ancestral country (valuing children being tolerant and
respectful, and valuing children taking responsibility), as well as
impartial institutions in the ancestral country, predict higher individual
tolerance. Our findings thus point to an important role for both formal- and
informal-institutional background factors in shaping tolerance.
JEL: F02 F22 Z13 Z18
Keywords: Tolerance; Integration; Liberal; Culture; Institutions; Religion
Date: 2019–05–28
URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1282&r=soc

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