In this issue we feature 12 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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In this issue we have:

1. Voting and contributing when the group is watching - Henry, Emeric; Louis-Sidois, Charles
2. Compliance Behavior in Networks: Evidence from a Field Experiment - Drago, Francesco; Mengel, Friederike; Traxler, Christian
3. Social Networks and Factor Markets: Panel Data Evidence from Ethiopia - Abay, Kibrom; Kahsay, Goytom; Berhane, Guush
4. Friends or traders? Do social networks explain the use of market mechanisms by farmers in India - Songsermsawas, Tisorn; Baylis, Kathy; Chhatre, Ashwini; Michelson, Hope; Prasanna, Satya
5. Spatial vs. Social Network Effects in Risk Sharing - Aida, Takeshi
6.  On the Puzzle of Diversification in Social Networks with Occupational  Mismatch - Zaharieva, Anna
7.  Understanding Peer Effects: On the Nature, Estimation and Channels of Peer Effects - Feld, Jan; Zölitz, Ulf
8.  Asymmetry of Information within Family Networks -Joachim De Weerdt; Garance Genicot; Alice Mesnard
9.  Gender priming and altruism in a random sample - Boschini, Anne; Dreber, Anna; von Essen, Emma; Muren, Astri; Ranehill, Eva
10. Incentives and Social Preferences: Experimental Evidence from a Seemingly Inefficienct Traditional Labor Contract - Goto, Jun; Sawada, Yasuyuki; Aida, Takeshi; Aoyagi, Keitaro
11. Social cooperatives, social welfare associations and social networks - Degli Antoni, Giacomo; Sabatini, Fabio
12. Gender and Corruption: A Reassessment - Debski, Julia; Jetter, Michael

 1. Voting and contributing when the group is watching

    Henry, Emeric

    Louis-Sidois, Charles

 Members of groups and organizations often have to decide on rules that  regulate their contributions to common tasks. They typically differ in their  propensity to contribute and often care about the image they project, in  particular want to be perceived by other group members as being high  contributors. In such environments we study the interaction between the way  members vote on rules and their subsequent contribution decisions. We show  that multiple norms can emerge. We draw surprising policy implications, on  the effect of group size, of supermajority rules and of the observability of  actions.

    Keywords: image concern; information aggregation; public good; voting

    JEL: D71 D72 H41

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10912&r=soc

 2. Compliance Behavior in Networks: Evidence from a Field Experiment

    Drago, Francesco (University of Naples Federico II)

    Mengel, Friederike (University of Essex)

    Traxler, Christian (Hertie School of Governance)  This paper studies the spread of compliance behavior in neighborhood networks  involving over 500,000 households in Austria. We exploit random variation  from a field experiment which varied the content of mailings sent to  potential evaders of TV license fees. Our data reveal a strong treatment

 spillover: 'untreated' households, who were not part of the experimental  sample, are more likely to switch from evasion to compliance in response to  the mailings received by their network neighbors. We analyze the spillover  within a model of communication in networks based on DeGroot (1974).

 Consistent with the model, we find that (i) the spillover increases with the  treated households' eigenvector centrality and that (ii) local concentration  of equally treated households produces a lower spillover. These findings  carry important implications for enforcement policies.

    Keywords: neighborhood networks, social learning, spillover, evasion,

     field experiment

    JEL: D8 H26 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9443&r=soc

 3. Social Networks and Factor Markets: Panel Data Evidence from Ethiopia

    Abay, Kibrom

    Kahsay, Goytom

    Berhane, Guush

 In the absence of well-established factor markets, the role of indigenous  institutions and social networks can be substantial for mobilizing factors  for agricultural production. We investigate the role of an indigenous social  network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions  among smallholder farmers. Using detailed longitudinal household survey data  and employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that iddir  membership improves households’ access to factor markets. Specifically, we  find that joining an iddir network improves households’ access to land, labor  and credit transactions between 7 and 11 percentage points. Furthermore, our  findings also indicate that iddir networks crowd-out borrowing from local  moneylenders (locally referred as Arata Abedari), a relatively expensive  credit source, virtually without affecting borrowing from formal credit  sources. These results point out the roles non-market arrangements, such as  social networks, can play in mitigating market inefficiencies in poor rural  markets.

    Keywords: Social networks, iddir networks, factor market imperfections,

     factor market transactions, crowding-out, Marketing, Public Economics,

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae15:210869&r=soc

 4. Friends or traders? Do social networks explain the use of market

     mechanisms by farmers in India

    Songsermsawas, Tisorn

    Baylis, Kathy

    Chhatre, Ashwini

    Michelson, Hope

    Prasanna, Satya

 A farmer's long-term relationship with a trader can improve access to market  information, but removes the farmers' option to sell to other traders in a  specific year. Social networks could act either as substitutes to traders,  helping disseminate market information and fostering economies of scale, or  as complements, where farmers help build relationships between their trader  and their peers. Using a household survey from India, we investigate whether  and how social networks are associated with a farmer's choice to enter into a  long-term relationship with a trader. We find that peers directly affect such  choice. Further, we find that network characteristics and the household's  position within that network influence the decision to have a long-term  relationship. Specifically, the more central position of the household and  the smaller number of connections with other households, the higher the  likelihood a household has a long-term relationship with at least one trader.

 We rule out that these effects are driven by proximity.

    Keywords: Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance,

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae15:211206&r=soc

 5. Spatial vs. Social Network Effects in Risk Sharing

    Aida, Takeshi

 Although substantial research has been conducted on informal consumption  smoothing mechanisms within villages, or within social clusters such as  family and friends, few studies have compared the effects of these spatial  and social networks. Employing spatial panel econometric models, this study  extends the conventional empirical test of the full risk-sharing hypothesis  to incorporate spatial and social network effects, and quantifies the  diffusion of income shocks in each network. Estimation results based on  household survey data in Southern Sri Lanka show that consumption smoothing  performs better in spatial networks than in social ones, because income  shocks defuse more effectively among neighboring households. This study also  shows the limitations of the conventional test when it is considered a  special case of a spatial econometric model.

    Keywords: Agribusiness,

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae15:210937&r=soc

 6. On the Puzzle of Diversification in Social Networks with Occupational

     Mismatch

    Zaharieva, Anna (Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University)  This paper incorporates social networks into a frictional labour market  framework. There are two worker types and two occupations. Both occupations  are subject to correlated business cycle fluctuations in labour demand. The  equilibrium in this model is characterized by occupational mismatch which is  associated with a wage penalty. This paper shows that there exists a unique  value of network homophily maximizing the present value of income. Therefore,  there is a gain for risk-neutral workers if their network is diversified  between the two occupations. The reason for diversification is that the  present value of income is a non-linear function of the network composition.

 Thus, it is not the desire to reduce the volatility of income as in standard  portfolio theory which is driving the decision of workers. Nevertheless, the  optimal diversification level is higher with stronger negative correlation in  labour demand between the two occupations, with a lower unemployment benefit  and with a higher probability of recession in the primary occupation. On the  other hand, the optimal diversification level is reduced if there is  on-the-job search in the state of mismatch.

    Keywords: diversification, homophily, Occupational mismatch, social

     networks

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bie:wpaper:547&r=soc

 7. Understanding Peer Effects: On the Nature, Estimation and Channels of Peer

     Effects

    Feld, Jan

    Zölitz, Ulf

 This paper estimates peer effects in a university context where students are  randomly assigned to sections. While students benefit from better peers on  average, low-achieving students are harmed by high-achieving peers. Analyzing  students’ course evaluations suggests that peer effects are driven by  improved group interaction rather than adjustments in teachers’ behavior or  students’effort. We further show, building on Angrist (2014), that classical  measurement error in a setting where group assignment is systematic can lead  to substantial overestimation of peer effects. With random assignment, as is  the case in our setting, estimates are only attenuated.

    Keywords: Peer effects, Higher education, Measurement error, Estimation

     bias,

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vuw:vuwecf:4789&r=soc

 8. Asymmetry of Information within Family Networks

    Joachim De Weerdt

    Garance Genicot

    Alice Mesnard

 This paper studies asymmetry of information and transfers within a unique  data set of 712 extended family networks from Tanzania. Using cross-reports  on asset holdings, we construct measures of misperception of income among all  pairs of households belonging to the same network. We show that there is  significant asymmetry of information and no evidence of major systematic  over-evaluation or under-evaluation of income in our data, although there is  a slight over-evaluation on the part of migrants regarding non-migrants. We  develop a static model of asymmetric information that contrasts altruism,  pressure and exchange as motives to transfer. The model makes predictions  about the correlations between misperceptions and transfers under these  competing explanations. Testing these predictions in the data uncovers the  active role played by the recipient. Our findings suggest that the recipient  sets the terms of the transfers, either by exerting pressure to give on the  donor or by holding the bargaining power during the exchange of services with  the donor.

    JEL: D12 O12 O15

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21685&r=soc

 9. Gender priming and altruism in a random sample

    Boschini, Anne (SOFI)

    Dreber, Anna (Stockholm School of Economics)

    von Essen, Emma (Aarhus University)

    Muren, Astri (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm University)

    Ranehill, Eva (University of Zurich)  We study gender differences in altruism in a large random sample of the  Swedish population using a standard dictator game. In our data, a gender gap  in altruism emerges when we increase the salience of gender by priming  participants with their gender and placing them in a gender-mixed context. In  this case women give more than in the baseline, and men give less, thereby  creating a significant gender difference in altruism. Our findings provide  insight into the conditions under which individuals’ gender identity is made  salient.

    Keywords: Gender differences; Random sample; Dictator games; Gender

     context; Priming; Experiment

    JEL: C91 C93 J16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:sunrpe:2015_0007&r=soc

10. Incentives and Social Preferences: Experimental Evidence from a Seemingly

     Inefficienct Traditional Labor Contract

    Goto, Jun

    Sawada, Yasuyuki

    Aida, Takeshi

    Aoyagi, Keitaro

 This paper investigates the interplay between economic incentives and social  norms in formulating rice planting contracts in the Philippines. In our study  area, despite the potential for pervasive opportunistic behaviors by workers,  a fixed-wage (FW) contract has been dominant for rice planting. To account  for the use of this seemingly inefficient contractual arrangement, we adopt a  hybrid experimental method of framed field experiments by randomized  controlled trials (RCT), in which we randomly assign three distinct labor  contracts—FW, individual piece rate (IPR), and group piece rate (GPR)—and  artefactual field experiments to elicit social preference parameters. Through  analyses of individual workers’ performance data from framed field  experiments and data on social preferences elicited by artefactual field  experiments, three main empirical findings emerge. First, our basic results  show the positive incentive effects in IPR and, equivalently, moral hazard  problems in FW, which are consistent with standard theoretical implications.

 Second, non-monetary incentives seem to play a significant role under FW:

 while social preferences such as altruism and guilt aversion play an  important role in stimulating incentives under FW, introducing monetary  incentives crowds out such intrinsic motivations, and other non-monetary  factors such as positive peer effects significantly enhance incentives under  a FW contract. Finally, as alternative hypotheses, our empirical results are  not necessarily consistent with the hypothesis of the interlinked contract of  labor and credit transactions in mitigating moral hazard problems, the  optimality of FW contract under large effort measurement errors, and the  intertemporal incentives arising from performance-based contract renewal  probabilities. Hence, considering the interplay of intrinsic motivations and  monetary incentives as well as the monetary costs of mitigating moral hazard  and free-riding problems through IPR, we may conclude that seemingly perverse  traditional contractual arrangements might be socially efficient.

    Keywords: Randomized controlled trials, incentives, social preferences,

     peer effect, labor contract, field experiments, Labor and Human Capital,

     D03, C93, D22, C91,

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iaae15:211687&r=soc

11. Social cooperatives, social welfare associations and social networks

    Degli Antoni, Giacomo

    Sabatini, Fabio

 We use an original dataset to study how participation in two types of  nonprofit organizations, i.e. social welfare associations and social  cooperatives, affects individual social capital, intended as networks of  cooperative relationships. Participation in both the types of organization  allows members to start new social relations. However, social welfare  associations seem to play a significantly greater role in the development of  volunteers’ social capital, favouring the creation of weak ties that are used  to exchange information and advice, and offering the opportunity to establish  stronger ties entailing concrete mutual support. Within social cooperatives,  workers appear to develop their individual social capital to a greater extent  than volunteers. Our results suggest that the composition of the workforce,  the depth of members’ involvement in the organization’s activities and human  resources strategies adopted by the management influence the creation of  cooperative relations through on-the-job interactions.

    Keywords: social capital, nonprofit organizations, social cooperatives,

     social networks, volunteering

    JEL: L31 L33 P13 Z1 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:67623&r=soc

12. Gender and Corruption: A Reassessment

    Debski, Julia (University of Bayreuth)

    Jetter, Michael (University of Western Australia)  This paper analyzes the relationship between gender and corruption,  controlling for country-specific heterogeneity in a panel framework. Using  annual observations in a pooled setting (no country-fixed effects) confirms  the positive link between the involvement of women in society and the absence  of corruption. However, once country-fixed effects are acknowledged, only the  share of female employers remains a positive and statistically meaningful  correlate. Nevertheless, the derived magnitude is negligible in a global  sample. Analyzing potential nonlinearities reveals that this effect is driven  by African nations, where a one standard deviation increase in the share of  female employers is related to a substantial decrease of corruption by 2.5  index points (scale from zero to ten). Surprisingly, the link between the  share of women in the labor force and the absence of corruption becomes  negative once country unobservables are accounted for. Taken together, these  findings cast doubt on a general, global relationship between gender and  corruption.

    Keywords: corruption, gender, panel data

    JEL: C23 D73 J16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9447&r=soc

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