In this issue we feature 7 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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1. Revealing the Economic Consequences of Group Cohesion - Simon Gaechter; Chris Starmer; Fabio Tufano
2. Kinship Systems, Cooperation and the Evolution of Culture - Benjamin Enke
3. Social capital and maternal health care use in rural Ethiopia - Sheabo Dessalegn, S.
4. The local environment shapes refugee integration: Evidence from post-war Germany - Braun, Sebastian; Dwenger, Nadja
5. Social ties and the demand for financial services - Eleonora Patacchini; Edoardo Rainone
6. Using Aggregated Relational Data to Feasibly Identify Network Structure without Network Data - Emily Breza; Arun G. Chandrasekhar; Tyler H. McCormick; Mengjie Pan
7. Polls, the Press, and Political Participation: The Effects of Anticipated Election Closeness on Voter Turnout - Leonardo Bursztyn; Davide Cantoni; Patricia Funk; Noam Yuchtman

1. Revealing the Economic Consequences of Group Cohesion

   Simon Gaechter (School of Economics, University of Nottingham)

   Chris Starmer (School of Economics, University of Nottingham)

   Fabio Tufano (School of Economics, University of Nottingham)  We introduce the concept of “group cohesion†to capture the economic  consequences of ubiquitous social relationships in group production. We  measure group cohesion, adapting the “oneness scale†from psychology. A  comprehensive program of new experiments reveals the considerable economic  impact of cohesion: higher cohesion groups are significantly more likely to  achieve Pareto-superior outcomes in classic weak-link coordination games. We  show that effects of cohesion are economically large, robust, and portable.

 We identify social preferences as a primary mechanism explaining the effects  of cohesion. Our results provide proof of concept for group cohesion as a  productive new tool of economic research.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcdx:2017-09&r=soc

2. Kinship Systems, Cooperation and the Evolution of Culture

   Benjamin Enke

 Cultural psychologists and anthropologists argue that societies have  developed heterogeneous systems of social organization to cope with social  dilemmas, and that an entire bundle of cultural characteristics has coevolved  to enforce cooperation within these different systems. This paper develops a  measure of the historical tightness of kinship structures to provide  empirical evidence for this large body of theories. In the data, societies  with loose ancestral kinship ties cooperate and trust broadly, which is  apparently sustained through a belief in moralizing gods, universally  applicable moral principles, feelings of guilt, and large-scale institutions.

 Societies with a historically tightly knit kinship structure, on the other  hand, exhibit strong in-group favoritism: they cheat on and are distrusting  of out-group members, but readily support in-group members in need. This  cooperation scheme is enforced by moral values of in-group loyalty,  conformity to tight social norms, emotions of shame, and strong local  institutions. These relationships hold across historical ethnicities,  contemporary countries, ethnicities within countries, and migrants. The  results suggest that religious beliefs, language, emotions, morality, and  social norms all coevolved to support specific social cooperation systems.

   JEL: D0 O0

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23499&r=soc

3. Social capital and maternal health care use in rural Ethiopia

   Sheabo Dessalegn, S. (Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management)

 This thesis analyzes the effect of social capital on maternal health care use  in rural Ethiopia. Reports show that in Ethiopia, despite the huge investment  in health infrastructure and the deployment of health professionals to  provide maternal health services free of charge, utilization remains low.

 Here we argue that one of the potential factors behind underutilization or  inequality in use of the services is social capital. Social capital is  important especially in the rural context, where access to modern means of  information is low. Accordingly, this study analyzed the effect of social  capital on maternal health care use, employing a broad definition of social  capital. The findings show that the use of maternal health services cannot be  fully explained using an individual perspective. They show that, among  others, social capital is an important determinant for knowing the benefits  of maternal health care and translating it into use. Also the findings show  that different dimensions of social capital have different effects on  maternal health care use. Thus free provision of the services may not ensure  use if the potential users have poor knowledge about the services. In a  nutshell, this study suggests that social capital is helpful in reducing  maternal deaths. Therefore, there is a need to strengthen the current  networking of mothers.

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiutis:bb0ec225-4ec3-4028-90d6-1177499505f0&r=soc

4. The local environment shapes refugee integration: Evidence from post-war Germany

   Braun, Sebastian

   Dwenger, Nadja

 This paper studies how the local environment in receiving counties affected  the economic, social, and political integration of the eight million  expellees who arrived in West Germany after World War II. We first document  that integration outcomes differed dramatically across West German counties.

 We then show that more industrialized counties and counties with low expellee  inflows were much more successful in integrating expellees than agrarian  counties and counties with high in inflows. Religious differences between  native West Germans and expellees had no effect on labor market outcomes, but  reduced inter-marriage rates and increased the local support for  anti-expellee parties.

   Keywords: Expellees,Forced migration,Immigration,Integration,Post-War Germany

   JEL: J15 J61 N34 C36

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:hohdps:102017&r=soc

5. Social ties and the demand for financial services

   Eleonora Patacchini (Cornell University)

   Edoardo Rainone (Bank of Italy)

 This paper studies the importance of social interactions for the adoption of  financial services among young adults. Specifically, we investigate whether,  how, and why financial decisions among interacting agents are correlated. We  exploit a unique dataset of friendship networks in the United States and a  novel estimation strategy that accounts for possibly endogenous network  formation. We find that not all social contacts are equally important: only  long-lasting relationships influence financial decisions. Moreover, this peer  influence exists only in cohesive social structures. This evidence is  consistent with an important role of trust in financial decisions. When  agents consider whether or not to adopt a financial instrument, they face a  risk and may place greater value on information coming from agents they  trust. These results can help explain the importance of face-to-face social  contacts for financial decisions.

   Keywords: financial market participation, financial literacy, social interactions, trust, network formation, endogeneity, Bayesian estimation

   JEL: C11 C31 D1 D14 D81 D85 G11 M31

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:wptemi:td_1115_17&r=soc

6. Using Aggregated Relational Data to Feasibly Identify Network Structure without Network Data

   Emily Breza

   Arun G. Chandrasekhar

   Tyler H. McCormick

   Mengjie Pan

 Social network data is often prohibitively expensive to collect, limiting  empirical network research. Typical economic network mapping requires (1)  enumerating a census, (2) eliciting the names of all network links for each  individual, (3) matching the list of social connections to the census, and

 (4) repeating (1)-(3) across many networks. In settings requiring field  surveys, steps (2)-(3) can be very expensive. In other network populations  such as financial intermediaries or high-risk groups, proprietary data and  privacy concerns may render (2)-(3) impossible. Both restrict the  accessibility of high-quality networks research to investigators with  considerable resources. We propose an inexpensive and feasible strategy for  network elicitation using Aggregated Relational Data (ARD) – responses to  questions of the form “How many of your social connections have trait k?” Our  method uses ARD to recover the parameters of a general network formation  model, which in turn, permits the estimation of any arbitrary node- or  graph-level statistic. The method works well in simulations and in matching a  range of network characteristics in real-world graphs from 75 Indian  villages. Moreover, we replicate the results of two field experiments that  involved collecting network data. We show that the researchers would have  drawn similar conclusions using ARD alone. Finally, using calculations from  J-PAL fieldwork, we show that in rural India, for example, ARD surveys are  80% cheaper than full network surveys.

   JEL: C83 D85 L14

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23491&r=soc

7. Polls, the Press, and Political Participation: The Effects of Anticipated

    Election Closeness on Voter Turnout

   Leonardo Bursztyn

   Davide Cantoni

   Patricia Funk

   Noam Yuchtman

 We exploit naturally occurring variation in the existence, closeness, and  dissemination of pre-election polls to identify a causal effect of  anticipated election closeness on voter turnout in Swiss referenda. Closer  elections are associated with greater turnout only when polls exist.

 Examining within-election variation in newspaper reporting on polls across  cantons, we find that close polls increase turnout significantly more where  newspapers report on them most. This holds examining only "incidental"

 exposure to coverage by periodicals whose largest audience is elsewhere. The  introduction of polls had larger effects in politically unrepresentative  municipalities, where locally available information differs most from  national polls.

   JEL: D72 P16

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23490&r=soc

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