In this issue we feature 8 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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In this issue we have:

1. "Get rid of the four olds": the long-lasting impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on Chinese society - Kerstin Schopohl
2. Responding to (Un)Reasonable Requests - Vittorio Pelligra; Tommaso Reggiani; Daniel John Zizzo
3. Network economics and the environment: insights and perspectives - Sergio Currarini; Carmen Marchiori; Alessandro Tavoni
4. Democracy and social capital in Greece - Daskalopoulou, Irene
5. The Development of Methodological Tools to Assess Public Confidence in the Civil Servants - Litvintseva, Elena Anan'evna; Karpichev, Viktor Sergeevich; Mamedov, Nizami; Afanasieva, N.V.; Rybakova, I.N.; Skipetrova, T.V.; Fateev, I.V.
6. Designing Online Marketplaces: Trust and Reputation Mechanisms - Michael Luca
7. Multilevel Transmission of Cultural Attitudes and Entrepreneurial Intention: Evidence from High-School Students - A. Tubadji; E. Santarelli; R. Patuelli

. "Get rid of the four olds": the long-lasting impact of the Chinese Cultural  Revolution on Chinese society

   Kerstin Schopohl

 This paper studies the long-term impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on  interpersonal trust, mental health and perceived equality. The Cultural  Revolution was a social upheaval in China between 1966 and 1976 initiated by  China’s leader Mao Zedong that resulted in a period of anarchy, violence and  chaos as well as a large number of deaths, injuries and much persecution  across China and was in particular targeted at intellectuals and the wealthy.

 The Cultural Revolution is likely to have had a long-lasting impact on social  capital and preferences as well as on mental well-being. Using data from the  Chinese General Social Survey as well as county level data on the number of  abnormal deaths and victims of political persecution between 1966 and 1971  from Walder and Su (2003), I use a difference-in-difference strategy  comparing individuals born before the Cultural Revolution with those born  thereafter as well as across different counties to estimate the impact of  Cultural Revolution intensity measured by victims and abnormal deaths on  interpersonal trust, depression and perceived equality. To control for  potential endogeneity due to unobservables as well as for measurement error,  I instrument Cultural Revolution Intensity with the number of universities in  a county at the time of the Cultural Revolution. I find that the Cultural  Revolution is associated with lower levels of interpersonal trust, perceived  equality and depression for more educated individuals born before the  Cultural Revolution. These results are largely robust to a battery of tests.

 This shows that violence and conflict can have long-lasting effects on  societies and that the consequences of the Cultural Revolution persist in  China up to today.

   Keywords: Cultural Revolution; China; Trust; Mental Health; Persistence

   JEL: Z13 N45 N35 P26

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csa:wpaper:2016-24&r=soc

2. Responding to (Un)Reasonable Requests

   Vittorio Pelligra (University of Cagliari)

   Tommaso Reggiani (LUMSA University)

   Daniel John Zizzo (Newcastle University Business School)  We consider the notions of static and dynamic reasonableness of requests in a  trust game experiment. We vary systematically the experimental norm of what  is expected from trustees to return to trustors, both in terms of level of  each request and in terms of sequence of the requests. Static reasonableness  matters in a self-biased way, in the sense that low requests justify  returning less but high requests tend to be ignored. Dynamic reasonableness  also matters, in the sense that, if requests keep increasing, trustees return  less than if requests of different size are presented in random or decreasing  order. Requests never systematically increase trustworthiness, but may  decrease it.

   Keywords: trust; trustworthiness; norms; reasonableness; moral wiggle room; moral licensing

   JEL: C91 D01 D03 D63

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lsa:wpaper:wpc13&r=soc

3. Network economics and the environment: insights and perspectives

   Sergio Currarini

   Carmen Marchiori

   Alessandro Tavoni

 Local interactions and network structures appear to be a prominent feature of  many environmental problems. This paper discusses a wide range of issues and  potential areas of application, including the role of relational networks in  the pattern of adoption of green technologies, common pool resource problems  characterized by a multiplicity of sources, the role of social networks in  multi-level environmental governance, infrastructural networks in the access  to and use of natural resources such as oil and natural gas, the use of  networks to describe the internal structure of inter-country relations in  international agreements, and the formation of bilateral “links” in the  process of building up an environmental coalition. For each of these areas,  we examine why and how network economics would be an effective conceptual and  analytical tool, and discuss the main insights that we can foresee.

   Keywords: networks; environmental externalities; technological diffusion; gas pipelines; common-pool-resources; multi-level governance; coalitions

   JEL: N0

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:63951&r=soc

4. Democracy and social capital in Greece

   Daskalopoulou, Irene

 Democracy is the notion broadly used to denote a society’s commitment towards  freedom and a better way of life. The minimum conditions that a country must  adhere to in order to be acknowledged as democratic refer to arrangements  between rulers and the ruled. In that sense, the key attributes of democracy  are institutional guarantees referred to as either political rights and  liberties or contestation for public office power and people’s participation.

 To the extent that these key attributes of democracy are shaped within a  variety of different societal contexts, democracy is not a quality that  either exists or not. Rather, different democracies exist depending largely  on a wide set of societal characteristics. The research aim relates to the  analysis of the relationship between democracy and social capital in Greece.

 In particular, we try to answer the question of whether we can speak of a  “democracy – trust continuum” in Greece as suggested by the available  literature, and if yes, where in this continuum could we possibly place  Greece. An exploratory meta-analysis is used in order to sketch the country’s  profile with respect to these phenomena and analyze the democracy – types of  trust interrelationship as manifested in the case of Greece.

   Keywords: Democracy, social capital, social trust, Greece

   JEL: D71 D73 H3 O2

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:73627&r=soc

5. The Development of Methodological Tools to Assess Public Confidence in the Civil Servants

   Litvintseva, Elena Anan'evna (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA))

   Karpichev, Viktor Sergeevich (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA))

   Mamedov, Nizami (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA))

   Afanasieva, N.V. (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA))

   Rybakova, I.N. (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA))

   Skipetrova, T.V. (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA))

   Fateev, I.V. (Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA))

 The paper presents the results of a scientific analysis of trust as a special  form of manifestation of social reality and human existence, certain areas of  freedom, the result of co-existence of individuals and social groups. Public  trust is a key characteristic of Russian society, which manifests itself as  an interpersonal level and at the level of social, including the credibility  of the public institutions and the state as a whole.Conceptual development of  public trust as a social mechanism for the stabilization of society and the  state allowed to consider the phenomenon of "confidence" to the citizens of  the state civil servants in the logic of "power - control - citizens' trust -  co-management (civic engagement)"

   Keywords: civil servants, public police, confidence

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rnp:wpaper:28610&r=soc

6. Designing Online Marketplaces: Trust and Reputation Mechanisms

   Michael Luca

 Online marketplaces have proliferated over the past decade, creating new  markets where none existed. By reducing transaction costs, online  marketplaces facilitate transactions that otherwise would not have occurred  and enable easier entry of small sellers. One central challenge faced by  designers of online marketplaces is how to build enough trust to facilitate  transactions between strangers. This paper provides an economist’s toolkit  for designing online marketplaces, focusing on trust and reputation  mechanisms.

   JEL: D47 D8 J15

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22616&r=soc

7. Multilevel Transmission of Cultural Attitudes and Entrepreneurial

    Intention: Evidence from High-School Students

   A. Tubadji

   E. Santarelli

   R. Patuelli

 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.

   JEL: R32 R38 Z10 J60

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp1073&r=soc

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