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

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In this issue we have:

1. Learned Generosity? A Field Experiment with Parents and Their Children - Anya Samek; Avner Ben-Ner; John List; Louis Putterman
2. Dishonesty: From Parents to Children - Anya Samek; Daniel Houser; Joachim Winter; John List; Marco Piovesan
3. Multilevel Transmission of Cultural Attitudes and Entrepreneurial Intention: Evidence from High-School Students - Annie Tubadji; Enrico Santarelli; Roberto Patuelli
4. Caring Alone? Social Capital and the Mental Health of Caregivers - Lars Thiel
5. Social Norms and Teenage Smoking: The Dark Side of Gender Equality - Rodríguez-Planas, Núria; Sanz-de-Galdeano, Anna
6. Gender, Institutions, and Economic Development: Findings and Open Research and Policy Issues - Stephan Klasen
7. Politicians, bureaucrats, and tax morale: What shapes tax compliance attitudes? Gabriel Leonardo; Jorge Martinez-Vazquez
8. Social Networks and Housing Market Investments - Johannes Stroebel
9. The impact of trust, risk and disaster exposure on microinsurance demand: Results of a DCE analysis in Cambodia - Fiala, Oliver; Wende, Danny
10. How Do Suggested Donations Affect Charitable Gifts? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Public Broadcasting - Anya Samek; David Reiley

 1. Learned Generosity? A Field Experiment with Parents and Their Children

    Anya Samek

    Avner Ben-Ner

    John List

    Louis Putterman

 An active area of research within the social sciences concerns the underlying  motivation for sharing scarce resources and engaging in other pro-social  actions. We develop a theoretical framework that sheds light on the  developmental origins of social preferences by providing mechanisms through  which parents transmit preferences for generosity to their children. Then, we  conduct a field experiment with nearly 150 3-5 year old children and their  parents, measuring (1) whether child and parent generosity is correlated, (2)  whether children are influenced by their parents when making sharing  decisions and (3) whether parents model generosity to children. We observe no  correlation of independently measured parent and child sharing decisions at  this young age. Yet, we find that apart from those choosing an equal  allocation of resources between themselves and another child, children adjust  their behaviors to narrow the gap with their parent's or other adult's  choice. We find that fathers, and parents of initially generous children,  increase their sharing when informed that their child will be shown their  choice.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:artefa:00434&r=soc

 2. Dishonesty: From Parents to Children

    Anya Samek

    Daniel Houser

    Joachim Winter

    John List

    Marco Piovesan

 Acts of dishonesty permeate life. Understanding their origins, and what  mechanisms help to attenuate such acts is an underexplored area of research.

 This study takes an economics approach to explore the propensity of  individuals to act dishonestly across different contexts. We conduct an  experiment that includes both parents and their young children as subjects,  exploring the roles of moral cost and scrutiny on dishonest behavior. We find  that the highest level of dishonesty occurs in settings where the parent acts  alone and the dishonest act benefits the child. In this spirit, there is also  an interesting, quite different, effect of children on parents' behavior: parents act more honestly under the scrutiny of daughters than under the  scrutiny of sons. This finding sheds new light on the origins of the widely  documented gender differences in cheating behavior observed among adults,  where a typical result is that females are more honest than males.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:artefa:00418&r=soc

 3. Multilevel Transmission of Cultural Attitudes and Entrepreneurial Intention: Evidence from High-School Students

    Annie Tubadji (Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Italy)

    Enrico Santarelli (Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Italy)

    Roberto Patuelli (Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Italy;

     The Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis, Italy)  Intention toward any occupational choice can be widely categorized as a  rational choice process combined with a subjective attitude function. There  is extensive literature dealing with the formation of intention toward  entrepreneurship in adolescents, in particular as a result of either parental

 (vertical) transmission of social capital or network effects from peers or  neighbours (the latter two being two different levels of horizontal  transmission varying in proximity in terms of bonding and bridging). We  contribute to this literature by considering the joint effect of all these  three levels simultaneously, in order to avoid an underspecification of the  model due to omission of important cultural factors. We hypothesize that such  three levels identify a mechanism where the individual perception of their  importance interacts with their objective characteristics. With data for  second-year high-school students, and employing empirical triangulation  through Logit and 3SLS methods, we find evidence for a strong parental effect  and of secondary peer effects on student intention. We also detect clear  endogenous effects from the neighbourhood and the overall cultural context.

 Moreover, entrepreneurship is confirmed to be perceived, even by students, as  a buffer for unemployment and social mobility.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rim:rimwps:16-23&r=soc

 4. Caring Alone? Social Capital and the Mental Health of Caregivers

    Lars Thiel

 This study analyzes the role of social capital in buffering the negative  relationship between informal-care provision and mental health. Using data  from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and fixed-effect regression  models, we show that those individuals who socialize more frequently enjoy  better mental health. We also find that stronger social ties moderate the  negative association between caregiving and mental well-being. The protective  role of social capital appears to be particularly strong for caregivers with  high time commitments or those who regularly perform voluntary work. The  moderating role of social activities can neither be explained by the  caregiver's observed characteristics correlated with social capital, nor by  features of the caregiving process. However, the results might be driven by  insuficient overlap in covariates between carers and non-carers, and the  simultaneity between caring decisions and social activities. We relate our  results to recent policy initiatives that aim to improve the carer's  well-being. Utilization of caregiver-support services is still rather low.

 Our findings suggest that caregivers may prefer informal support provided by  family, friends, or neighbors to public caregiver benefits. To corroborate  this hypothesis, further research regarding the (causal) buffering effects of  social capital in the context of informal care is needed.

    Keywords: Informal care, social capital, mental health

    JEL: I10 J14 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp860&r=soc

 5. Social Norms and Teenage Smoking: The Dark Side of Gender Equality

    Rodríguez-Planas, Núria (Queens College, CUNY)

    Sanz-de-Galdeano, Anna (Universidad de Alicante)  This paper is the first to provide evidence that cultural attitudes towards  gender equality affect behaviors with potentially devastating health  consequences, and that they do so differently for male and female teenagers.

 In particular, we show that descending from more gender-equal societies makes  girls relatively more prone to smoke than boys. Using data from over 6,000  second-generation immigrant teenagers coming from 45 different countries of  ancestry and living in Spain, we find that the higher the degree of gender  equality in the country of ancestry, the higher the likelihood that immigrant  girls smoke relative to boys, even after we control for parental, sibling,  and peer smoking. Importantly, we uncover similar patterns when analyzing  other risky behaviors such as drinking or smoking marijuana. This reinforces  the idea that more gender-equal social norms may come at an extra cost to  women's health, as they increasingly engage in risky behaviors (beyond smoking) traditionally more prevalent among men.

    Keywords: culture and institutions, smoking, risky behaviors, gender equality, gender gap index

    JEL: I10 I12 J15 J16 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10134&r=soc

 6. Gender, Institutions, and Economic Development: Findings and Open Research and Policy Issues

    Stephan Klasen (Georg-August University Göttingen)  Gender relations are a key institution governing important aspects of  production and reproduction of societies. They are guided by formal  institutions as well as informal norms and values. As this survey shows,  there is great regional heterogeneity in gender inequality in formal and  informal social institutions. The literature on long‐term drivers of gender  gaps suggests that those gender gaps are related to long‐standing and  regularly reproduced gender norms and values related to differences in  women's economic opportunities and constraints. The paper also shows that  these gender gaps not only affect gender equity but overall development  outcomes such as economic growth and reductions in mortality. This is best  documented in the case of gender gaps in education but there is also evidence  for the negative effects gender of gaps in employment, political and economic  empowerment, access to resources, and social institutions on development  outcomes. The paper then shows that there has been a large and heterogeneous  change in gender gaps. While gender gaps in education (and legal rights) have  closed very rapidly, gender gaps in labor force participation, health,  political participation, and time use have closed much less rapidly, and  there has been virtually progress in reducing occupational and sectoral  segregation, unexplained gender pay gaps, and violence against women. The  paper presents some hypotheses that might explain this differential  performance and also contribute to understanding regional dynamics, before  pointing towards a forward‐looking research agenda on better understanding  the linkages between institutions and their change, gender inequality, and  economic development.

    Keywords: gender; institutions; economic development

    JEL: D63 J71 O15

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:211&r=soc

 7. Politicians, bureaucrats, and tax morale: What shapes tax compliance attitudes?

    Gabriel Leonardo (International Center for Public Policy. Andrew Young

     School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University)

    Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (International Center for Public Policy. Andrew

     Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University)  What actions do governments take that may affect individual trust? Although  the literature on tax morale has reported a positive relationship between  trust in government and tax morale, it is less known what is that government  does to elicit trust among taxpayers. Which government organizations are most  likely to produce those actions? This paper examines how governments elicit  tax morale by testing the proposition that trust in government is built by  the way citizens are treated when receiving their share of public goods and  services from government institutions charged with the delivery of those  goods and services, known as the output side (Rothstein, 2005). We use data  from close to forty countries in the 2005-2007 wave of the World Values  Survey (WVS) and after controlling for the level of political rights and  civil liberties, we find that trust in administrative (output) government  institutions positively influences tax morale, especially in the case of  people living in democratic countries.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper1608&r=soc

 8. Social Networks and Housing Market Investments

    Johannes Stroebel (New York University)  We document that the house price experience within individuals' social  networks affect their housing market expectations, and through this channel  have large effects on individual and aggregate housing market outcomes

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed016:485&r=soc

 9. The impact of trust, risk and disaster exposure on microinsurance demand: Results of a DCE analysis in Cambodia

    Fiala, Oliver

    Wende, Danny

 Natural disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity and have  devastating impacts on individuals, both humanitarian and economic,  particularly in developing countries. Microinsurance is seen as one promising  instrument of disaster risk management, however the level of demand for  respective projects remains low. Using behavioural games and a discrete  choice experiment, this paper analyses the demand for hypothetical  microinsurance products in rural Cambodia and contributes significant  household level evidence to the current research. A general preference for  microinsurance can be found, with demand significantly affected by price,  provider, requirements for prevention and combinations with credit.

 Furthermore, financial literacy, risk aversion, levels of trust and previous  disaster experience impact the individual demand for flood insurance in rural  Cambodia.

    Keywords: microinsurance,trust,risk,discrete choice experiment,Cambodia

    JEL: Q10 Q50 Q54 O10 C25

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tuddps:0116&r=soc

10. How Do Suggested Donations Affect Charitable Gifts? Evidence from a Field

     Experiment in Public Broadcasting

    Anya Samek

    David Reiley

 Direct mail fundraisers commonly provide a set of suggested donation amounts  to potential donors, in addition to the option of writing in an amount. Yet  little systematic evidence exists about the causal effects of suggested  donation amounts on giving behavior. To this end, we conducted a field  experiment on a direct mail solicitation to nearly 15,000 members of three  public broadcasting stations. We varied (1) the vector of suggested amounts,  and (2) whether the suggested amounts were fixed or varied as a proportion of  the individual's previous donation. We find that increasing the vector of  suggested amounts by about 20 percent statistically significantly reduces the  overall probability of giving by about 15 percent. The overall impact on  revenue is less clear, but appears to be somewhat negative. Higher suggested  amounts also lead to write in amounts representing a greater proportion of  donations. We attribute our result to the apparent cognitive cost of writing  in a preferred amount that differs from a suggested amount. A second field  experiment, in which we alter only one of the suggested amounts, gives  evidence consistent with that theory and with the idea that donors prefer to  give round numbers, as we see donors significantly more likely to give  amounts of $90 or higher when suggested $100 versus $95.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:natura:00422&r=soc

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