In this issue we feature 14 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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In this issue we have:

1. The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany - Andreas Lichter; Max Löffler; Sebastian Siegloch
2. Responding to (Un)Reasonable Requests - Pelligra, Vittorio; Reggiani, Tommaso; Zizzo, Daniel John
3. Networks and Migrants' Intended Destination - Bertoli, Simone; Ruyssen, Ilse
4. Networks and Markets - Goyal, S.
5. Discrimination against Female Migrants Wearing Headscarves - Weichselbaumer, Doris
6. Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash - Inglehart, Ronald F.; Norris, Pippa
7. Do migrants think differently? Evidence from East European and post-Soviet states - Ruxanda Berlinschi; Ani Harutyunyan
8. Crony Capitalism in Mozambique: Evidence from Networks of Politicians and Businessmen - Andes Chivangue
9. Ideological Perfectionism - Chen, Daniel L.; Michaeli, Moti; Spiro, Daniel
10. Culture, Diffusion, and Economic Development - Ani Harutyunyan; Omer Ozak
11. Ability Tracking and Social Capital in China’s Rural Secondary School System - Fan Li; Prashant Loyalka; Hongmei Yi; Yaojiang Shi; Natalie Johnson; Scott Rozelle
12. Residential Choices of Young Americans - Patacchini, Eleonora; Arduini, Tiziano
13. The specific shapes of gender imbalance in scientific authorships: a network approach - Tanya Araújo; Elsa Fontainha
14. Preferences for Truth-Telling - Abeler, Johannes; Nosenzo, Daniele; Raymond, Collin

 1. The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany

    Andreas Lichter

    Max Löffler

    Sebastian Siegloch

 Despite the prevalence of government surveillance systems around the world,  causal evidence on their social and economic consequences is lacking. Using  county-level variation in the number of Stasi informers within Socialist East  Germany during the 1980s and accounting for potential endogeneity, we show  that more intense regional surveillance led to lower levels of trust and  reduced social activity in post-reunification Germany. We also find  substantial and long-lasting economic effects of Stasi spying, resulting in  lower self-employment, higher unemployment and larger out-migration  throughout the 1990s and 2000s. We further show that these effects are due to  surveillance and not alternative mechanisms. We argue that our findings have  important implications for contemporary surveillance systems.

    Keywords: government surveillance, trust, social ties, East Germany

    JEL: H11 N34 N44 P20

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp865&r=soc

 2. Responding to (Un)Reasonable Requests

    Pelligra, Vittorio (University of Cagliari)

    Reggiani, Tommaso (Libera Università Maria Ss. Assunta Palermo)

    Zizzo, Daniel John (Newcastle University)  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:iza:izadps:dp10189&r=soc

 3. Networks and Migrants' Intended Destination

    Bertoli, Simone (CERDI, University of Auvergne)

    Ruyssen, Ilse (Ghent University)

 Social networks are known to influence migration decisions, but connections  between individuals can hardly be observed. We rely on individual-level  surveys conducted by Gallup in 147 countries that provide information on  migration intentions and on the existence of distance-one connections for all  respondents in each of the potential countries of intended destination. The  origin-specific distribution of distance-one connections from Gallup closely  mirrors the actual distribution of migrant stocks across countries, and  bilateral migration intentions appear to be significantly correlated with  actual flows. This unique data source allows estimating origin-specific  conditional logit models that shed light on the value of having a friend in a  given country on the attractiveness of that destination. The validity of the  distributional assumptions that underpin the estimation is tested, and  concerns about the threats to identification posed by unobservables are  substantially mitigated.

    Keywords: international migration, networks, intentions

    JEL: F22

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10213&r=soc

 4. Networks and Markets

    Goyal, S.

 Networks influence human behavior and well being, and realizing this,  individuals make conscious efforts to shape their own networks. Over the past  decade, economists have combined these ideas with concepts from game theory,  oligopoly, general equilibrium, and information economics to develop a  general framework of analysis. The ensuing research has deepened our  understanding of classical questions in economics and opened up entirely new  lines of enquiry.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:1652&r=soc

 5. Discrimination against Female Migrants Wearing Headscarves

    Weichselbaumer, Doris (University of Linz)  Germany is currently experiencing a high influx of Muslim migrants. From a  policy perspective, integration of migrants into the labor market is crucial.

 Hence, a field experiment was conducted that examined the employment chances  of females with backgrounds of migration from Muslim countries, and  especially of those wearing headscarves. It focused on Turkish migrants, who  have constituted a large demographic group in Germany since the 1970s. In the  field experiment presented here, job applications for three fictitious female  characters with identical qualifications were sent out in response to job

 advertisements: one applicant had a German name, one a Turkish name, and one  had a Turkish name and was wearing a headscarf in the photograph included in  the application material. Germany was the ideal location for the experiment  as job seekers typically attach their picture to their résumé. High levels of  discrimination were found particularly against the migrant wearing a  headscarf.

    Keywords: discrimination, Muslim religion, headscarf, hiring, experiment

    JEL: C93 J15 J71

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10217&r=soc

 6. Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash

    Inglehart, Ronald F. (University of michigan)

    Norris, Pippa (Harvard University)

 Rising support for populist parties has disrupted the politics of many  Western societies. What explains this phenomenon? Two theories are examined  here. Perhaps the most widely-held view of mass support for populism--the  economic insecurity perspective--emphasizes the consequences of profound  changes transforming the workforce and society in post-industrial economies.

 Alternatively, the cultural backlash thesis suggests that support can be  explained as a reaction against cultural changes that threaten the worldview  of once-predominant sectors of the population. To consider these arguments,  Part I develops the conceptual and theoretical framework. Part II of the  study uses the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) to identify the  ideological location of 268 political parties in 31 European countries. Part  III compares the pattern of European party competition at national-level.

 Part IV uses the pooled European Social Survey 1-6 (2002-2014) to examine the  cross-national evidence at individual level for the impact of the economic  insecurity and cultural values as predictors of voting for populist parties.

 Part V summarizes the key findings and considers their implications. Overall,  we find consistent evidence supporting the cultural backlash thesis.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:harjfk:16-026&r=soc

 7. Do migrants think differently? Evidence from East European and post-Soviet states

    Ruxanda Berlinschi

    Ani Harutyunyan

 This research analyzes differences in values and beliefs between individuals  in European and postSoviet states who intend to emigrate and those who do  not. In particular, we investigate which political, economic and social  values and beliefs are significant determinants of the intention to emigrate,  after controlling for relevant socio-economic and demographic confounding  factors. The results indicate that self-selection patterns exist in some  dimensions, such as evaluation of home country governance and institutions,  political participation and trust in other people, while they are absent in  other dimensions, such as economic liberalism, views on democracy and free  markets. Results also indicate that migrant self-selection patterns are  heterogeneous across regions. This analysis aims to improve our understanding  of the determinants of emigration, as well as of its possible consequences on  the dynamics of governance and institutions.

    Keywords: Migration determinants, Culture, Transition economies

    JEL: P30 F22 F63 F68 Z10

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lic:licosd:38116&r=soc

 8. Crony Capitalism in Mozambique: Evidence from Networks of Politicians and Businessmen

    Andes Chivangue

 This paper discusses crony capitalism in Mozambique, by analysing the social  networks that exist among political and economic players, using the SNA  Social Networks Analysis method. The variables are selected to identify  cliques and the covariates that explain this network relationship are taken  into account, namely military, ethnicity, family, politics, business,  entrepreneurship, political party and gender. Policy implications are derived.

    Keywords: Mozambique, social networks, crony capitalism, multivariate analysis, policy implications

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cav:cavwpp:wp135&r=soc

 9. Ideological Perfectionism

    Chen, Daniel L.

    Michaeli, Moti

    Spiro, Daniel

 Studying a high-stakes field setting, we examine which individuals, on an  ideological scale, conform more to the opinion of others. In the U.S. Courts  of Appeals, legal precedents are set by ideologically diverse and randomly  composed panels of judges. Using exogenous predictors of ideology and rich  voting data we show that ideological disagreements drive dissents against the  panel’s decision, but ideologically extreme judges are caving in: they are  the least likely to dissent and their voting records are the least correlated  with their predicted ideology. Meanwhile, moderately ideological judges are  dissenting the most despite evidence that they are more often determining the  opinion. Our theoretical analysis shows that these findings are most  consistent with a model of decision making in the presence of peer pressure  with a concave cost of deviating from one’s ideological convictions –  perfectionism. This result presents a critique of a standard assumption in  economics – that the cost of deviating from one’s bliss point is convex –  with fundamental implications for decision making in social and political  settings and for the empirical predictions of theoretical models in these  domains.

    Keywords: Judicial decision making, group decision making, ideology, peer pressure.

    JEL: D7 K00 Z1

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:iastwp:30836&r=soc

10. Culture, Diffusion, and Economic Development

    Ani Harutyunyan

    Omer Ozak

 This research explores the effects of culture on technological diffusion and  economic development. It shows that culture’s direct effects on development  and barrier effects to technological diffusion are, in general, observationally  equivalent. In particular, using a large set of measures of cultural values,  it establishes empirically that pairwise differences in contemporary  development are associated with pairwise cultural differences relative to the  technological frontier, only in cases where observational equivalence holds.

 Additionally, it establishes that differences in cultural traits that are  correlated with genetic and linguistic distances are statistically and  economically significantly correlated with differences in economic development.

 These results highlight the difficulty of disentangling the direct and barrier  effects of culture, while lending credence to the idea that common ancestry  generates persistence and plays a central role in economic development.

    Keywords: Comparative economic development, economic growth, culture, barriers to technological diffusion, genetic distances, linguistic distances

    JEL: O10 O11 O20 O33 O40 O47 O57 Z10

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lic:licosd:38216&r=soc

11. Ability Tracking and Social Capital in China’s Rural Secondary School System

    Fan Li

    Prashant Loyalka

    Hongmei Yi

    Yaojiang Shi

    Natalie Johnson

    Scott Rozelle

 The goal of this paper is describe and analyze the relationship between  ability tracking and student social capital, in the context of poor students  in developing countries. Drawing on the results from a longitudinal study  among 1,436 poor students across 132 schools in rural China, we find a  significant lack of interpersonal trust and confidence in public institutions  among poor rural young adults. We also find that there is a strong  correlation between ability tracking during junior high school and levels of  social capital. The disparities might serve to further widen the gap between  the relatively privileged students who are staying in school and the less  privileged students who are dropping out of school. This result suggests that  making high school accessible to more students would improve social capital  in the general population.

    Keywords: Ability Tracking, Social Capital, Interpersonal Trust, Confidence in Public Institutions, Rural Secondary Schooling

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lic:licosd:37916&r=soc

12. Residential Choices of Young Americans

    Patacchini, Eleonora (Cornell University)

    Arduini, Tiziano (University of Bologna)  Using detailed data on a cohort of young Americans who were in their late  twenties and early thirties in 2008, we investigate the importance of forces  different from economic incentives in nest-leaving decisions. We apply recent  methods from social network econometrics to identify the importance of peers  net of confounding factors. For the entire sample, our findings reveal no  evidence of peer effects. Indicators of parenting and the social structure of  families appear to be the major factors in the decisions to coreside with  parents. However, for those who moved back home after a few years of living  alone, we find strong peer effects. These findings are consistent with  theories of social influences in peer groups in which peers play a critical  role for individuals with time-inconsistent preferences.

    Keywords: living arrangements, social networks, endogenous network formation, spatial autoregressive model, control function approach, Bayesian estimation, social multiplier

    JEL: A14 C21 D85 R21 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10186&r=soc

13. The specific shapes of gender imbalance in scientific authorships: a network approach

    Tanya Araújo

    Elsa Fontainha

 Gender differences in collaborative research have received little attention  when compared with the growing importance that women hold in academia and  research. Unsurprisingly, most of bibliometric databases have a strong lack  of directly available information by gender. Although empirical-based network  approaches are often used in the study of research collaboration, the studies  about the influence of gender dissimilarities on the resulting topological  outcomes are still scarce. Here, networks of scientific subjects are used to  characterize patterns that might be associated to five categories of  authorships which were built based on gender. We find enough evidence that  gender imbalance in scientific authorships brings a peculiar trait to the  networks induced from papers published in Web of Science (WoS) indexed  journals of Economics over the period 2010-2015 and having at least one  author affiliated to a Portuguese institution. Our results show the emergence  of a specific pattern when the network of co-occurring subjects is induced  from a set of papers exclusively authored by men. Such a male-exclusive  authorship condition is found to be the solely responsible for the emergence  that particular shape in the network structure. This peculiar trait might  facilitate future network analyses of research collaboration and  interdisciplinarity. Key Words : co-occurrence networks, gender, research  collaboration, interdisciplinarity, bibliometrics, minimum spanning tree

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:isegwp:wp172016&r=soc

14. Preferences for Truth-Telling

    Abeler, Johannes (University of Oxford)

    Nosenzo, Daniele (University of Nottingham)

    Raymond, Collin (Amherst College)

 Private information is at the heart of many economic activities. For decades,  economists have assumed that individuals are willing to misreport private  information if this maximizes their material payoff. We combine data from 72  experimental studies in economics, psychology and sociology, and show that,  in fact, people lie surprisingly little. We then formalize a wide range of  potential explanations for the observed behavior, identify testable  predictions that can distinguish between the models and conduct new  experiments to do so. None of the most popular explanations suggested in the  literature can explain the data. We show that only combining a preference for  being honest with a preference for being seen as honest can organize the  empirical evidence.

    Keywords: private information, honesty, truth-telling, lying, meta study

    JEL: D03 D82 H26 I13 J31

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10188&r=soc

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