In this issue we feature 9 current papers on the theme of social capital, chosen by Fabio Sabatini (Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”):

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1. Spillover Effects of Institutions on Cooperative Behavior, Preferences, and Beliefs - Florian Engl; Arno Riedl; Roberto A. Weber
2. Internet and Politics: Evidence from U.K. Local Elections and Local Government Policies - Alessandro Gavazza; Mattia Nardotto; Tommaso Valletti
3. Too Lucky to be True - Fairness Views under the Shadow of Cheating - Stefania Bortolotti; Ivan Soraperra; Matthias Sutter; Claudia Zoller
4. The Diffusion of New Institutions: Evidence from Renaissance Venice's Patent System - Stefano Comino; Alberto Galasso; Clara Graziano
5. Measures of interpersonal trust: Evidence on their cross-national validity and reliability based on surveys and experimental data - Ryan E. Carlin; Gregory J. Love; Conal Smith
6. The value of political connections in the first German democracy: Evidence from the Berlin stock exchange - Lehmann-Hasemeyer, Sibylle; Opitz, Alexander
7. Worldviews and Intergenerational Altruism: A Comparison of Turkish People Living in Turkey and Germany - K. Ali Akkemik; Mehmet Bulut; Marcus Dittrich; Koray Göksal; Kristina Leipold; Masao Ogaki
8. The effect of information on social preferences towards an outgroup of refugees: A field experiment - Bajrami, Leon; Loschelder, David D.; Mechtel, Mario
9. Partners in Crime: Diffusion of Responsibility in Antisocial Behaviors - Behnk, Sascha; Hao, Li; Reuben, Ernesto

1. Spillover Effects of Institutions on Cooperative Behavior, Preferences, and Beliefs

   Florian Engl

   Arno Riedl

   Roberto A. Weber

 Institutions are an important means for fostering prosocial behaviors, but in  many contexts their scope is limited and they govern only a subset of all  socially desirable acts. We use a laboratory experiment to study how the  presence and nature of an institution that enforces prosocial behavior in one  domain affects behavior in another domain and whether it also alters  prosocial preferences and beliefs about others’ behavior. Groups play two  identical public good games. We vary whether, for only one game, there is an  institution enforcing cooperation and vary also whether the institution is  imposed exogenously or arises endogenously through voting. Our results show  that the presence of an institution in one game generally enhances  cooperation in the other game thus documenting a positive spillover effect.

 These spillover effects are economically substantial amounting up to 30 to 40  percent of the direct effect of institutions. When the institution is  determined endogenously spillover effects get stronger over time, whereas  they do not show a trend when it is imposed exogenously. Additional  treatments indicate that the main driver of this result is not the  endogeneity but the temporal trend of the implemented institution. We also  find that institutions of either type enhance prosocial preferences and  beliefs about others’ prosocial behavior, even toward strangers, suggesting  that both factors are drivers of the observed spillover effects.

   Keywords: public goods, institutions, spillover effect, social preferences, beliefs

   JEL: C92 D02 D72 H41

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6504&r=soc

2. Internet and Politics: Evidence from U.K. Local Elections and Local Government Policies

   Alessandro Gavazza

   Mattia Nardotto

   Tommaso Valletti

 We empirically study the effects of broadband internet diffusion on local  election outcomes and on local government policies using rich data from the  U.K. Our analysis suggests that the internet has displaced other media with  greater news content (i.e., radio and newspapers), thereby decreasing voter  turnout, most notably among less-educated and younger individuals. In turn,  we find suggestive evidence that local government expenditures and taxes are  lower in areas with greater broadband diffusion, particularly expenditures  targeted at less-educated voters. Our findings are consistent with the idea  that voters' information plays a key role in determining electoral  participation, government policies and government size.

   Keywords: Internet, newspaper, media, elections, policy

   JEL: D72 C50 L86

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1691&r=soc

3. Too Lucky to be True - Fairness Views under the Shadow of Cheating

   Stefania Bortolotti

   Ivan Soraperra

   Matthias Sutter

   Claudia Zoller

 The steady increase in inequality over the past decades has revived a lively  debate about what can be considered a fair distribution of income. Public  support for the extent of redistribution typically depends on the perceived  causes of income inequality, such as differences in effort, luck, or  opportunities. We study how fairness views and the extent of redistribution  are affected by a hitherto overlooked, but relevant factor: immoral  self-serving behavior that can lead to increased inequality. We focus on  situations in which the rich have potentially acquired their fortunes by  means of cheating. In an experiment, we let third parties redistribute  resources between two stakeholders who could earn money either by choosing a  safe amount or by engaging in a risky, but potentially more profitable,  investment. In one treatment, the outcome of the risky investment is  determined by a random move, while in another treatment stakeholders can  cheat to obtain the more profitable outcome. Although third parties cannot  verify cheating, we find that the mere suspicion of cheating changes fairness  views of third parties considerably and leads to a strong polarization. When  cheating opportunities are present, the share of subjects redistributing  money from rich to poor stakeholders triples and becomes as large as the  fraction of libertarians - i.e., participants who never redistribute. Without  cheating opportunities, libertarian fairness views dominate, while  egalitarian views are much less prevalent. These results indicate that  fairness views and attitudes towards redistribution change significantly when  people believe that income inequality is the result of cheating by the rich.

   Keywords: fairness views, redistribution, unethical behavior, inequality, experiment

   JEL: C91 D63 D81 H26

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6563&r=soc

4. The Diffusion of New Institutions: Evidence from Renaissance Venice's Patent System

   Stefano Comino

   Alberto Galasso

   Clara Graziano

 What factors affect the diffusion of new economic institutions? This paper  examines this question exploiting the introduction of the first regularized  patent system which appeared in the Venetian Republic in 1474. We begin by  developing a model which links patenting activity of craft guilds with  provisions in their statutes. The model predicts that guild statutes that are  more effective at preventing outsider’s entry and at mitigating price  competition lead to less patenting. We test this prediction on a new dataset  which combines detailed information on craft guilds and patents in the  Venetian Republic during the Renaissance. We find a negative association  between patenting activity and guild statutory norms which strongly restrict  entry and price competition. We show that guilds which originated from  medieval religious confraternities were more likely to regulate entry and  competition, and that the effect on patenting is robust to instrumenting  guild statutes with their quasi-exogenous religious origin. We also find that  patenting was more widespread among guilds geographically distant from  Venice, and among guilds in cities with lower political connection which we  measure exploiting a new database on noble families and their marriages with  members of the great council. Our analysis suggests that local economic and  political conditions may have a substantial impact on the diffusion of new  economic institutions.

   Keywords: patents, competition, guilds, institutions

   JEL: O33 O34 K23

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6612&r=soc

5. Measures of interpersonal trust: Evidence on their cross-national validity and reliability based on surveys and experimental data

   Ryan E. Carlin (Georgia State University)

   Gregory J. Love (University of Mississippi)

   Conal Smith (OECD)

 Interpersonal trust (i.e. trust in other people) is an issue of high interest  to both policy-makers and researchers seeking to understand what drives  social and economic outcomes. However, for trust to usefully inform policy  and analysis it is necessary to have valid and reliable measures of it.

 Despite a large body of evidence on the relationship between trust and other  social and economic outcomes, evidence on the validity of trust from  experimental data is conflicting. In particular, while many studies find no  correlation between survey measures of trust and experimental measures at an  individual level, other studies suggest a significant, if modest, correlation  at the country level. This article examines the relationship between survey  and experimental measures of trust in others using a large dataset containing  aggregate experimental and survey measures of trust from 167 studies  conducted in 36 countries. Importantly, the dataset also includes individual  measures of both survey and behavioural trust in seven countries, and data  from two panel studies with repeated survey measures of trust. Using these  multiple data sources, the paper investigates the degree to which survey  measures of interpersonal trust are valid at both an individual and  cross-country level. The paper shows the existence of a significant  correlation between survey and experimental measures of interpersonal trust  at the country-level. Evidence on measurement errors in existing small-scale  studies underscores the importance of developing better quality data from  both surveys and experiments.

   Keywords: Interpersonal trust, measurement, trust game

   JEL: C83 C91 Z10

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:stdaaa:2017/10-en&r=soc

6. The value of political connections in the first German democracy: Evidence from the Berlin stock exchange

   Lehmann-Hasemeyer, Sibylle

   Opitz, Alexander

 In this paper, we provide the first overview over all political connections  for all firms listed on the Berlin stock exchange in 1924 and for the same  sample of firms four years later. In contrast to anecdotal evidence which  suggest that these political connections had a positive effect on firms' performance, an event study based on the election in December 1924 and May 1928 shows only little evidence that political connections had a positive  impact on firm value. These results complement previous research emphasizing  that political connections might have mattered less in democracies. Indeed,  this seems true for Germany's first democracy - even though it was a very  unstable one.

   Keywords: Political Connections,Interwar Germany,Stock Market Performance

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:hohdps:242017&r=soc

7. Worldviews and Intergenerational Altruism: A Comparison of Turkish People Living in Turkey and Germany

   K. Ali Akkemik

   Mehmet Bulut

   Marcus Dittrich

   Koray Göksal

   Kristina Leipold

   Masao Ogaki

 In this paper, we examine and compare the impact of cultural differences on  intergenerational altruism in Turkish people living in Turkey and in Germany,  using the anthropological concept of worldview. Data were gathered from four surveys: nationwide surveys in Turkey and Germany, an online survey of  Turkish people living in Germany, and a survey conducted as an experiment in  a mosque attended by Turkish people in Germany. We find striking differences  in parenting attitudes between Turkish people living in Turkey and those who  live in Germany. Turkish people living in Germany tend to resemble German  people in their parenting attitudes. We also find that differences in  confidence attached to worldview beliefs, differences in religiosity, and the  subjective probabilities attached to worldview beliefs (such as “All humans  evolved from another living organism†) between Turkish people living in  Turkey and those in Germany have statistically significant explanatory power  for these differences in parenting attitudes.

   Keywords: intergenerational altruism, worldviews, religion, tough love, spoiling love

   JEL: Z10 Z12 D64

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6404&r=soc

8. The effect of information on social preferences towards an outgroup of refugees: A field experiment

   Bajrami, Leon

   Loschelder, David D.

   Mechtel, Mario

 Previous research has shown that individuals discriminate against outgroup  members in economic decision-tasks (e.g., Chen and Li 2009, Hett et al. 2017,  see also Social Identity Theory, Tajfel and Turner 1979). In this paper, we  examine senders’ economic decisions in a dictator game, given that the  receiver belongs to a refugee outgroup. First, we find that providing  stylized information about the perspective of the receiver influences  senders’ social preferences. Second, we show that political preferences  matter substantially. Our data reveal that senders’ political orientation  moderates the effect of information on their social preferences: While the  information treatment strengthens social preferences towards outgroup members  for more left-wing oriented participants, the treatment effect on  participants who favor more right-wing parties is even negative. Our  experiment allows to derive policy implications on how attitudes towards  refugees could be altered.

   Keywords: outgroup discrimination,social identity,social preferences,refugees,information,field experiment

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc17:168225&r=soc

9. Partners in Crime: Diffusion of Responsibility in Antisocial Behaviors

   Behnk, Sascha (University of Zurich)

   Hao, Li (University of Arkansas, Fayetteville)

   Reuben, Ernesto (New York University, Abu Dhabi)  Using a series of sender-receiver games, we find that two senders acting  together are willing to behave more antisocially towards the receiver than  single senders. This result is robust in two contexts: when antisocial  messages are dishonest and when they are honest but unfavorable. Our results  suggest that diffusion of responsibility is the primary reason for the  increased antisocial behavior as our experimental design eliminates competing  explanations. With a partner in crime, senders think that behaving  antisocially is more acceptable and experience less guilt. Importantly, we  identify a crucial condition for the increased antisocial behavior by groups: the partner in crime must actively participate in the decision-making. Our  results have important implications for institutional design and promoting  prosocial behaviors.

   Keywords: diffusion of responsibility, antisocial behavior, moral norms, guilt aversion

   JEL: D70 D91 C92 D63

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11031&r=soc

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