In this issue we feature 10 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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In this issue we have:

1. Volunteering to Take on Power: Experimental Evidence from Matrilineal and Patriarchal Societies in India - Debosree Banerjee; Marcela Ibanez; Gerhard Riener; Meike Wollni
2. Incentives and Social Preferences: Experimental Evidence from a Seemingly Inefficient Traditional Labor Contract - Goto, Jun; Sawada, Yasuyuki; Aida, Takeshi; Aoyagi, Keitaro
3. Trust, Ability-to-Pay, and Charitable Giving -  Paul Missios; Ida Ferrara
4. How forced displacement flows affect public good contributions: The social consequences of conflict in Colombia - Hopfensitz, Astrid; Miquel-Florensa, Josepa
5. Young Adults Living with their Parents and the Influence of Peers - Adamopoulou, Effrosyni; Kaya, Ezgi
6. Conflict, Institutions, and Economic Behavior: Legacies of the Cambodian Genocide -  Kogure, Katsuo; Takasaki, Yoshito
7. Impacts of Supporting Civic Participation in Local Governance: Experimental Evidence from Rwanda -  Ira Nichols-Barrer; Ali Protik; Jacqueline Berman; Matt Sloan
8. Economic downturn and volunteering: Do economic crises affect content generation on Wikipedia? Kummer, Michael; Slivko, Olga; Zhang, Michael
9. The Vote With the Wallet as a Multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma -  Leonardo Becchetti; Francesco Salustri
10. How the eurobarometer blurs the Line between research and propaganda - Höpner, Martin; Jurczyk, Bojan

1. Volunteering to Take on Power: Experimental Evidence from Matrilineal and Patriarchal Societies in India -  Debosree Banerjee (Georg-August-University Göttingen); Marcela Ibanez (Georg-August-University Göttingen); Gerhard Riener (University of Düsseldorf)

Meike Wollni (Georg-August-University Göttingen)  Gender equity in the creation and enforcement of social norms is important  not only as a normative principle but it can also support long term economic  growth. Yet in most societies, coercive power is in the hands of men. We  investigate whether this form of segregation is due to inherent gender  differences in the willingness to volunteer for take on positions of power.

In order to study whether potential differences are innate or driven by  social factors, we implement a public goods game with endogenous third-party  punishment in matrilineal and patriarchal societies in India. Our findings  indicate that segregation in coercive roles is due to conformity with  pre-assigned gender roles in both cultures. We find that women in the  matrilineal society are more willing to assume the role of norm enforcer than  men while the opposite is true in the patriarchal society. Moreover, we find  that changes in the institutional environment that are associated with a  decrease in the exposure and accountability of the norm enforcer, result in  increased participation of the segregated gender. Our results suggest that  the organizational environment can be adjusted to increase representation of  women in positions of power, and that it is critical to take the cultural  context into account.

Keywords: Gender; Norm enforcement; Segregation; Third party punisher; Public goods game

JEL: C90 C92 C93 C92 D03 D70 D81 J16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:191&r=soc

2. Incentives and Social Preferences: Experimental Evidence from a Seemingly Inefficient 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 nonmonetary  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

JEL: D03 C93 D22 C91

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hitcei:2014-12&r=soc

3. Trust, Ability-to-Pay, and Charitable Giving - Paul Missios (Department of Economics, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada)

Ida Ferrara (Department of Economics, York University, Toronto, Canada)  In the literature on privately provided public goods, altruism has been  motivated by what contributions can accomplish (public goods philanthropy),  by the pleasure of giving (warm-glow philanthropy), or by the desire to  personally make a difference (impact philanthropy). We revisit these motives  but allow for income heterogeneity and distrust in the institutional  structures involved. We also model socially motivated philanthropy when  income-heterogeneous donors take trust and ability-to-pay into account. We  show key differences across the four models in terms of crowding out and in  the effects of income distribution. In the socially motivated model,  low-income donors may contribute more than high-income donors, giving  theoretical foundation to the frequently observed "U-shaped" pattern of  giving.

Keywords: Philanthropy, Social Motivation, Trust, Ability to Pay, Crowding Out.

JEL: D03 H31 H41 Q53

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rye:wpaper:wp061&r=soc

4. How forced displacement flows affect public good contributions: The social  consequences of conflict in Colombia - Hopfensitz, Astrid; Miquel-Florensa, Josepa

Low intensity armed conflict is usually related to population displacement,  altering networks and social capital in affected regions. With an  incentivized questionnaire performed in the Colombian coffee growing axis  (Eje Cafetero), we observe contribution to an abstract and anonymous public  good when contributions are not enforceable. Game contributions are  significantly higher in regions with high net-changes of population due to  displacement, both for regions with net in-flow and net out-flow, compared to  a more stable area. We find that the effect is especially strong for women in  net out-flow areas; usually the most affected if male family members are  forcibly displaced. We further propose a local inspection mechanism, and show  that it increases contributions in all areas independently of the  displacement history of the location and the individuals preferences with  respect to this mechanism.

Keywords: Colombia ; conflict ; displacement ; public good games

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:29843&r=soc

5. Young Adults Living with their Parents and the Influence of Peers -  Adamopoulou, Effrosyni;  Kaya, Ezgi (Cardiff Business School) 

This paper focuses on young adults living with their parents in the U.S. and  studies the role of peers. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of  Adolescent Health (Add Health) we analyze the influence of high school  friends on the nest-leaving decision of young adults. We achieve  identification by exploiting the differences in the timing of leaving the  parental home among peers, the individual-specific nature of the peer groups  that are based on friendship nominations, and by including school (net-work)  and grade (cohort) fixed effects. Our results indicate that there are  statistically significant peer effects on the decision of young adults to  leave parental home. This is true even after we control for labor and housing  market conditions and for a comprehensive list of individual and  family-of-origin characteristics that are usually unobserved by the  econometrician. We discuss various mechanisms and we confirm the robustness  of our results through a placebo exercise. Our findings reconcile with the  increasing trend of young adults living with their parents that has been  observed in the US during the last 50 years.

Keywords: peer effects; friends; living arrangements; leaving parental home

JEL: D10 J12 J60 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2015/12&r=soc

 6. Conflict, Institutions, and Economic Behavior: Legacies of the Cambodian Genocide -  Kogure, Katsuo;  Takasaki, Yoshito

This paper examines potential long-term effects of the Cambodian genocide  under the Pol Pot regime (1975-'79) on individual economic behaviors, taking  into account underlying institutions. Combining spatial genocide data and  census microdata, we examine effects of the genocide on subsequent parental  investments in children's education of couples who had their first child  during and after the Pol Pot regime. Under the state ownership of spouses and  children, resulting from the complete denial of private ownership, the two couples had different institutional experiences during the Pol Pot regime: the former couples were controlled as family organizations, whereas the  latter ones were controlled as individuals. Our results suggest that the  genocide negatively influenced subsequent educational investments in children  among the former couples, but not the latter ones. We provide underlying  mechanisms behind these findings, which are coherent with social context.

Keywords: conflict, genocide, institutions, education, Cambodia 

JEL: N35 O15 O17

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hitcei:2014-13&r=soc

7. Impacts of Supporting Civic Participation in Local Governance: Experimental Evidence from Rwanda -  Ira Nichols-Barrer;  Ali Protik;  Jacqueline Berman;  Matt Sloan

This paper evaluates a recent program sponsored by the Millennium Challenge  Corporation to promote civic participation in local governance in Rwanda.

Keywords: governance, democracy, civil society, citizen participation

JEL: F Z

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:2536ddc8fdea407fb27b2d41a53407fa&r=soc

 8. Economic downturn and volunteering: Do economic crises affect content generation on Wikipedia?  Kummer, Michael; Slivko, Olga; Zhang, Michael

In this paper, we address the impact of surging unemployment on online public  good provision. Specifically, we ask how drastically increased unemployment  affects voluntary contributions of content to the online encyclopedia  Wikipedia. We put together a monthly country-level data set, which combines  country specific economic outcomes with data on contributions to the online  encyclopedia. As a source of exogenous variation in the economic state we use  the fact that European countries were affected by the financial crisis in the  US in September 2008 with different intensity. For European countries, we  find that the economic downturn is associated with more viewership, which  channels higher participation of volunteers in Wikipedia expressed in editing  activity and content growth. We provide evidence for increased information  search online or online learning as a potential channel of the change in  public goods provision, which is a potentially important side effect of  economic downturn.

Keywords: public goods,unemployment,online platforms,user generated content

JEL: D29 D80 H41 J60 L17

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:15078&r=soc

9. The Vote With the Wallet as a Multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma  -  Leonardo Becchetti (University of Rome Tor Vergata)

Francesco Salustri (DEDI, University of Rome "Tor Vergata")  Socially responsible consumers and investors are increasingly using their  consumption and saving choices as a “vote with the wallet” to award companies  which are at vanguard in reconciling the creation of economic value with  social and environmental sustainability. In our paper we model the vote with  the wallet as a multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma, outline equilibria and  possible solutions to the related coordination failure problem, apply our  analysis to domains in which the vote with the wallet is empirically more  relevant, and provide policy suggestions

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility, Multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma, Voting with the Wallet

JEL: C72 C73 D11 H41 M14

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:359&r=soc

10. How the eurobarometer blurs the Line between research and propaganda -  Höpner, Martin; Jurczyk, Bojan

This paper reviews Eurobarometer surveys from 1995 to 2010 and shows how  Eurobarometer selects and frames questions in ways that systematically  produce "integrationist" outcomes. The violations of the rules of good public  opinion research concern incomprehensible, hypothetical, and  knowledge-inadequate questions, unbalanced response options, insinuation and  leading questions, context effects, and the strategic removal of questions  that led to critical responses in previous Eurobarometer waves. It is highly  unlikely that the violations happen unintentionally. Eurobarometer therefore  blurs the line between research and propaganda.

Dieses Paper unterzieht die zwischen 1995 und 2010 durchgeführten  Eurobarometer-Umfragen einer kritischen Überprüfung und weist nach, wie  Fragen so ausgewählt und formuliert werden, dass sie zu  "integrationistischen" Ergebnissen führen. Die Verletzungen der Regeln guter  Umfrageforschung betreffen die Nutzung von überkomplizierten, hypothetischen  und wissensinadäquaten Fragen, die Vorgabe einseitig gepolter  Antwortkategorien, Suggestivfragen, Kontexteffekte sowie die strategische  Entfernung von Fragen, die in früheren Befragungswellen zu unerwünschten  Ergebnissen führten. Es ist sehr unwahrscheinlich, dass diese  Regelverletzungen unintendiert geschehen. Das Eurobarometer verwischt daher  die Grenze zwischen Forschung und Propaganda.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:156&r=soc

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