Date:

2014-01-31

By:

Sabatini, Fabio
Sarracino, Francesco

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:53325&r=soc

Studies in the social capital literature have documented two stylised facts: first, a decline in measures of social participation has occurred in many OECD countries. Second, and more recently, the success of social networking sites (SNSs) has resulted in a steep rise in online social participation. Our study adds to this body of research by conducting the first empirical assessment of how online networking affects two economically relevant aspects of social capital, i.e. trust and sociability. We find that participation in SNSs such as Facebook and Twitter has a positive effect on face-to-face interactions. However, social trust decreases with online interactions. Several interpretations of these findings are discussed.

Keywords:

social participation; online networks; Facebook; Internet-mediated communication; social capital; broadband; digital divide

JEL:

C36 D85 O33 Z1

Date:

2014-01

By:

Sato, Yasuhiro (Osaka University)
Zenou, Yves (Stockholm University)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7914&r=soc

We develop a model where the unemployed workers in the city can find a job either directly or through weak or strong ties. We show that, in denser areas, individuals choose to interact with more people and meet more random encounters (weak ties) than in sparsely populated areas. We also demonstrate that, for a low urbanization level, there is a unique steady-state equilibrium where workers do not interact with weak ties, while, for a high level of urbanization, there is a unique steady-state equilibrium with full social interactions. We show that these equilibria are usually not socially efficient when the urban population has an intermediate size because there are too few social interactions compared to the social optimum. Finally, even when social interactions are optimal, we show that there is over-urbanization in equilibrium.

Keywords:

weak ties, strong ties, social interactions, urban economics, labor market

JEL:

J61 R14 R23

Date:

2014-01

By:

Mastrobuoni, Giovanni (University of Essex)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7925&r=soc

Using declassified Federal Bureau of Narcotics records on 800 US Mafia members active in the 1950s and 1960s, and on their connections within the organized crime network, I estimate network effects on gangsters' economic status. Lacking information on criminal proceeds, I measure economic status exploiting detailed information about their place of residence. Housing values are reconstructed using current deflated transactions recorded on Zillow.com. I deal with the potential reverse causality between the economic status and the gangster's position in the network exploiting exogenous exposure to potential pre-immigration connections. In the absence of pre-immigration data I use the informational content of surnames, called isonomy, to measure the place of origin. The instrument is valid as long as conditional on the characteristics of the gangsters (including the region of birth and a rich set of controls about the gangsters' legal and illegal activities) such exposure influences the gangsters' importance in- side the network (called centrality) but not the preference for specific housing needs. A standard deviation increase in closeness centrality increases economic status by between one forth (OLS) and one standard deviation (2SLS).

Keywords:

mafia, networks, centrality, housing prices, value of connections, crime, surnames, isonomy

JEL:

A14 C21 D23 D85 K42 Z13

Date:

2014-01

By:

Pietro Battiston
Luca Stanca

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mib:wpaper:267&r=soc

This paper investigates opinion dynamics and social influence in directed communication networks. We study the properties of a generalized boundedly rational model of opinion formation in which individuals aggregate the information they receive by using weights that are a function of their neighbors' indegree. We then present an experiment designed to test the predictions of the model. We find that both Bayesian updating and boundedly rational updating à la DeMarzo et al. (2003) are rejected by the data. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, the social influence of an agent is positively and significantly affected by the number of individuals she listens to. When forming their opinions, agents do take into account the structure of the communication network, although in a sub-optimal way.

Keywords:

Social Networks, Learning, Social In uence, Bounded Rationality

JEL:

D85 D83 A14 L14 Z13

Date:

2014-01

By:

Hans Pitlik
Ludek Kouba

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feu:wfeppr:y:2014:m:1:d:0:i:8&r=soc

We address empirically trust as a determinant of support for government intervention. The central notion provided in the present paper is that the influence of generalized social trust on intervention attitudes is conditional on the perceived reliability, honesty, and incorruptibility of state actors and of major companies. Starting point is an idea by Aghion, Algan, Cahuc, and Shleifer (2010) that individuals who generally distrust others have a stronger taste for a regulation of economic activities, while people with high interpersonal trust are in favor of less strict regulations and state control. This line of argumentation neglects that (lack of) trust spills over to distrust in both governmental as well as in private institutions. People who tend to (dis-)trust other unknown people also tend to (dis-)trust state actors and private sector actors. Estimating the determinants of interventionist preferences with data from the World Values Survey/European Values Study for approximately 100,000 -115,000 individuals in 37 OECD- and EU-countries, we show that the impact of social trust on government intervention attitudes is conditional on individual confidence in state actors and in companies.

Keywords:

Social trust, institutional trust, government regulation, preference formation

JEL:

D70 D78 H10

Date:

2014-01-28

By:

Johnsen, Åshild A (UiS)
Kvaløy, Ola (UiS)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:stavef:2014_002&r=soc

In repeated games, it is hard to distinguish true prosocial behavior from strategic instrumental behavior. In particular, a player does not know whether a reciprocal action is intrinsically or instrumentally motivated. In this paper, we experimentally investigate the relationship between intrinsic and instrumental reciprocity by running a two-period repeated trust game. In the `strategic treatment' the subjects know that they will meet twice, while in the `non-strategic treatment' they do not know and hence the second period comes as a surprise. We find that subjects anticipate instrumental reciprocity, and that intrinsic reciprocity is rewarded. In fact, the total level of cooperation, in which trust is reciprocated, is higher in the non-strategic treatment. Instrumental reciprocity thus seems to crowd out intrinsic reciprocity: If one takes the repeated game incentives out of the repeated game

Keywords:

Trust; Reciprocity; Repeated Games; Experiment

JEL:

C72 C91 D03

Date:

2014-02

By:

Bénédicte H. Apouey (EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris, PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - CNRS : UMR8545 - École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - École des Ponts ParisTech (ENPC) - École normale supérieure [ENS] - Paris - Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA))
Gabriel Picone (Department of Economics - University of South Florida)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00940084&r=soc

This paper examines the existence of social interactions in malaria preventive behaviors in Sub-Saharan Africa, i.e. whether an individual's social environment has an influence on the individual's preventive behaviors. We focus on the two population groups which are the most vulnerable to malaria (children under 5 and pregnant women) and on two preventive behaviors (sleeping under a bednet and taking intermittent preventive treatment during pregnancy). We define the social environment of the individual as people living in the same region. To detect social interactions, we calculate the size of the social multiplier by comparing the effects of an exogenous variable at the individual level and at the regional level. Our data come from 92 surveys for 29 Sub-Saharan countries between 1999 and 2012, and they cover approximately 660,000 children and 95,000 women. Our results indicate that social interactions are important in malaria preventive behaviors, since the social multipliers for women's education and household wealth are greater than one - which means that education and wealth generates larger effects on preventive behaviors in the long run than we would expect from the individual-level specifications, once we account for social interactions.

Keywords:

Social interactions ; Social multiplier ; Malaria preventive behavior

Date:

2014-01

By:

Trude Lappegård
Sebastian Klüsener (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)
Daniele Vignoli (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2014-002&r=soc

Childbearing within cohabitation has gained considerable ground in recent decades, but existing explanations for this development are not coherent. Proponents of the Second Demographic Transition framework interpret it rather as a pattern of progress driven by processes such as emancipation from traditional social norms. Others see rises in childbearing in cohabitation being related to a “pattern of disadvantage” as they are often concentrated among individuals faced with blocked opportunities. In this paper we argue that these inconsistencies might stem from a gap in knowledge how the relevance of existing theories varies dependent on whether we look at variation in family formation behavior across individuals, subnational regions or countries. To test this hypothesis we revisit the existing theories by analyzing harmonized survey data from 16 European countries using a three-level hierarchical model. Our results suggest that the Second Demographic Transition framework is particularly important to understanding variation between countries, while pattern of disadvantage hypotheses seem more relevant to understanding variation between individuals and subnational regions.

Keywords:

Europe, cohabitation, economic conditions, family formation, fertility, social norms

JEL:

J1 Z0

Date:

2014-01

By:

Dai, Zhixin (CNRS, GATE)
Hogarth, Robin M. (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Villeval, Marie Claire (CNRS, GATE)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7932&r=soc

We investigate the impact of various audit schemes on the future provision of public goods, when contributing less than the average of the group is sanctioned exogenously and the probability of an audit is unknown. We study how individuals update their beliefs about the probability of being audited, both before and after audits are definitely withdrawn. We find that when individuals have initially experienced systematic audits, they decrease both their beliefs and their contributions almost immediately after audits are withdrawn. In contrast, when audits were initially less frequent and more irregular, they maintain high beliefs about the probability of being audited and continue cooperating long after audits have been withdrawn. Inconsistency in experiencing audits across time clearly increases the difficulty of learning the true audit probabilities. Thus, conducting less frequent and irregular audits with higher fines can increase efficiency dramatically.

Keywords:

ambiguity, audits, sanctions, beliefs, cooperation, public goods, experiment

JEL:

C92 H41 D83

Date:

2014

By:

Alessandro Innocenti
Francesca Lorini
Chiara Rapallini (Dipartimento di Scienza per l'Economia e l'Impresa)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2014_03.rdf&r=soc

The paper analyzes the case of Belgium to provide insight into the relationships among ethnic heterogeneity, voting participation and local economic growth. We find that heterogeneity, and external and internal mobility reduce immigrants’ voting participation, while we do not find support for the hypothesis that voting participation is related to local economic growth, with the exception of Flanders, which is the most ethnically homogeneous region of Belgium. This finding is interpreted as showing that an increase in ethnic heterogeneity prevails over other factors in determining local economic performance via a decline in social capital.

Keywords:

ethnic heterogeneity, voting, political participation, local economic growth, Tiebout model.

JEL:

D72 H4 H7 N4 R1

Date:

2013-12

By:

Vanessa Mertins (Institute for Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the EU, University of Trier)
Wolfgang Hoffeld (Institute for Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the EU, University of Trier)

URL:

http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iaa:dpaper:201313&r=soc

The tendency to underestimate others’ relative performance compared to one’s own is widespread among individuals in all work environments. We examine the relationship between, and the driving forces behind, individual overconfidence and voluntary cooperation in team production. Our experimental data suggest an indirect and gender-specific link: Overconfident men hold more optimistic beliefs about coworkers’ cooperativeness than men who lack confidence, and are accordingly significantly more cooperative, whereas overconfidence, beliefs, and cooperativeness are not correlated in women.

Keywords:

team production, public good, experiment, real effort, cooperation, gender, overconfidence, belief

JEL:

M52 J33 J16 J24 C91