In this issue we feature 12 current papers on the theme of social capital, chosen by Fabio Sabatini (Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”):

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1. Determinants of trust: the role of personal experiences Frederik Schwerter; Florian Zimmermann 
2. Migration and the Value of Social Networks Blumenstock, Joshua; Chi, Guanghua; Tan, Xu 
3. Partial Norms D'Adda, Giovanna; Dufwenberg, Martin; Passarelli, Francesco; Tabellini, Guido
4. Interacting collective action problems in the commons - Nicolas Querou
5. Do farmers follow the herd? The influence of social norms in the participation to agri-environmental schemes. Philippe Le Coent; Raphaele Preget; Sophie Thoyer 
6. Cultural Transmission with Incomplete Information: Parental Perceived Efficacy and Group Misrepresentation. Sebastiano Della Lena; Fabrizio Panebianco 
7. The Intergenerational Behavioural Consequences of a Socio-Political Upheaval - Alison Booth; Xin Meng; Elliott Fan; Dandan Zhang 
8. Why understanding multiplex social network structuring processes will help us better understand the evolution of human behavior - Curtis Atkisson; Piotr J. G\'orski; Matthew O. Jackson; Janusz A. Ho{\l}yst; Raissa M. D'Souza
9. Impact of religious participation, social interactions and globalisation on meat consumption: evidence from India - Massimo Filippini; Suchita Srinivasan
10. The (in)elasticity of moral ignorance - Marta Serra-Garcia; Nora Szech
11. Immigration and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from a Natural Experiment - Mehic, Adrian
12. Highly skilled and well connected: Migrant inventors in Cross-Border M&As - Diego USECHE; Ernest MIGUELEZ; Francesco LISSONI

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 1. Determinants of trust: the role of personal experiences

   Frederik Schwerter; Florian Zimmermann

  Social interactions pervade daily life and thereby create an abundance of

  social experiences. Such personal experiences likely shape what we believe

  and who we are. In this paper, we ask if and how personal experiences from

  social interactions determine individuals? inclination to trust others? We

  implement an experimental environment that allows us to manipulate prior

  social experiences?either being paid or not being paid by a peer subject for

  a task?and afterwards measure participant?s willingness to trust others. We

  contrast this situation with a control condition where we keep all aspects

  of the prior experiences identical, except that we remove the social

  dimension. Our key finding is that after positive social experiences,

  subjects? willingness to trust is substantially higher relative to subjects

  who made negative social experiences. No such effect is obtained in the

  control condition where we removed the social aspect of experiences.

  Findings from a difference-in-difference analysis confirm this pattern. Our

  results cannot be explained by rational learning, income effects, pay or

  social comparison related mood, disappointment aversion and

  expectations-based or social reference points. Delving into the underlying

  mechanisms, we provide evidence that non-standard belief patterns are an

  important driver of experience effects.

   JEL: C91 D03 D81

   Keywords: determinants of trust, experiences, beliefs, non-standard

    learning, experiments

   Date: 2019

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7545&r=soc

 

 2. Migration and the Value of Social Networks

   Blumenstock, Joshua; Chi, Guanghua; Tan, Xu

  What is the value of a social network? Prior work suggests two distinct

  mechanisms that have historically been difficult to differentiate: as a

  conduit of information, and as a source of social and economic support. We

  use a rich 'digital trace' dataset to link the migration decisions of

  millions of individuals to the topological structure of their social

  networks. We find that migrants systematically prefer 'interconnected'

  networks (where friends have common friends) to 'expansive' networks (where

  friends are well connected). A micro-founded model of network-based social

  capital helps explain this preference: migrants derive more utility from

  networks that are structured to facilitate social support than from networks

  that efficiently transmit information.

   JEL: D85 O12 O15 R23 Z13

   Keywords: Big Data; Development; migration; networks; social capital;

    Social Networks

   Date: 2019?03

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13611&r=soc

 

 3. Partial Norms

   D'Adda, Giovanna; Dufwenberg, Martin; Passarelli, Francesco; Tabellini,

    Guido

  We consider an expanded notion of social norms that render them

  belief-dependent and partial, formulate a series of related testable

  predictions, and design an experiment based on a variant of the dictator

  game that tests for empirical relevance. Main results: Normative beliefs

  influence generosity, as predicted. Degree of partiality leads to more

  dispersion in giving behavior, as predicted.

   JEL: C91 D91

   Keywords: Consensus; Experiment; normative expectations; partial norms;

    Social norms

   Date: 2019?03

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13593&r=soc

 

 4. Interacting collective action problems in the commons

   Nicolas Querou (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier

    - FRE2010 - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UM -

    Universit? de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche

    Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d??tudes

    sup?rieures agronomiques de Montpellier)

  We consider a setting where agents are subject to two types of collective

  action problems, any group user's individual extraction inducing an

  externality on others in the same group (intra-group problem), while

  aggregate extraction in one group induces an externality on each agent in

  other groups (intergroup problem). One illustrative example of such a

  setting corresponds to a case where a common-pool resource is jointly

  extracted in local areas, which are managed by separate groups of

  individuals extracting the resource in their respective location. The

  interplay between both types of externality is shown to affect the results

  obtained in classical models of common-pool resources. We show how the

  fundamentals affect the individual strategies and welfare compared to the

  benchmark commons problems. Finally, different initiatives (local

  cooperation, inter-area agreements) are analyzed to assess whether they may

  alleviate the problems, and to understand the conditions under which they do

  so.

   Keywords: externalities,common-pool resource,collective action

   Date: 2018

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpceem:halshs-01936007&r=soc

 

 5. Do farmers follow the herd? The influence of social norms in the

     participation to agri-environmental schemes.

   Philippe Le Coent (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement -

    Montpellier - FRE2010 - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche

    Agronomique - UM - Universit? de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de

    la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national

    d??tudes sup?rieures agronomiques de Montpellier); Rapha?le Preget (CEE-M

    - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - FRE2010 - INRA -

    Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UM - Universit? de

    Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique -

    Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d??tudes sup?rieures agronomiques

    de Montpellier); Sophie Thoyer (CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de

    l'Environnement - Montpellier - FRE2010 - INRA - Institut National de la

    Recherche Agronomique - UM - Universit? de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre

    National de la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut

    national d??tudes sup?rieures agronomiques de Montpellier)

  This article analyses the role played by social norms in farmers' decisions

  to enroll into an agri-environmental scheme (AES). First, it develops a

  simple theoretical model highlighting the interplay of descriptive and

  injunctive norms in farmers' utility functions. Second, an empirical

  valuation of the effect of social norms is provided based on the results of

  a stated preference survey conducted with 98 wine-growers in the South of

  France. Proxies are proposed to capture and measure the weight of social

  norms in farmers' decision to sign an agri-environmental contract. Our

  empirical results indicate that the injunctive norm seems to play a stronger

  role than the descriptive norm.

   Keywords: agri-environmental contracts,behaviour,social norms

   Date: 2018

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpceem:halshs-01936004&r=soc

 

 6. Cultural Transmission with Incomplete Information: Parental Perceived

     Efficacy and Group Misrepresentation.

   Sebastiano Della Lena; Fabrizio Panebianco (Universit? Cattolica del Sacro

    Cuore; Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Universit? Cattolica del Sacro

    Cuore)

  This paper introduces incomplete information in the standard model of

  cultural transmission (Bisin and Verdier, 2001). We allow parents to ignore

  own group size and the efficiency of their cultural transmission technology,

  while receiving a feedback from their children. Using the selfcon_rming

  equilibrium concept, parents may end up to sustain, and be confirmed about,

  wrong conjectures. We show that in equilibrium optimal socialization efforts

  display cultural complementarity with respect to own population share, while

  the standard substitution result holds with respect their own conjectured

  population shares. Considering the population dynamics, if conjectures about

  population shares are shaped by cultural leaders who want to maximize the

  presence of own traits in the next period, then conjectures are

  characterized by negative biases. Our main finding is that, depending on the

  magnitude of the bias, the dynamics can display stable or unstable

  polymorphic equilibria, or just a stable homomorphic equilibrium,

  potentially reverting standard predictions

   JEL: C72 D10 D80 J10 Z10

   Keywords: Cultural Transmission; Incomplete Information; Selfcon rming

    Equilibrium; Group Under-Representation; Parental Perceived Ecacy;

    Cultural leaders.

   Date: 2019?03

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctc:serie1:def079&r=soc

 

 7. The Intergenerational Behavioural Consequences of a Socio-Political

     Upheaval

   Alison Booth; Xin Meng; Elliott Fan; Dandan Zhang

  Social scientists have long been interested in the effects of

  social-political upheavals on a society subsequently. A priori, we would

  expect that, when traumas are brought about by outsiders, within-group

  behaviour would become more collaborative, as society unites against the

  common foe. Conversely, we would expect the reverse when the conflict is

  generated within-group. In our paper we are looking at this second form of

  upheaval, and our measure of within-group conflict is the 1966-1976 Cultural

  Revolution (CR) that seriously disrupted many aspects of Chinese society. In

  particular, we explore how individuals' behavioural preferences are affected

  by within-group traumatic events experienced by their parents or

  grandparents. Using data from a laboratory experiment in conjunction with

  survey data, we find that individuals with parents or grandparents affected

  by the CR are less trusting, less trustworthy, and less likely to choose to

  compete than their counterparts whose predecessors were not direct victims

  of the CR.

   JEL: C91 N4

   Keywords: Preferences, Behavioural Economics, Cultural Revolution

   Date: 2019?02

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:hpaper:074&r=soc

 

 8. Why understanding multiplex social network structuring processes will

     help us better understand the evolution of human behavior

   Curtis Atkisson; Piotr J. G\'orski; Matthew O. Jackson; Janusz A.

    Ho{\l}yst; Raissa M. D'Souza

  Anthropologists have long appreciated that single-layer networks are

  insufficient descriptions of human interactions---individuals are embedded

  in complex networks with dependencies. One debate explicitly about this

  surrounds food sharing. Some argue that failing to find reciprocal food

  sharing means that some process other than reciprocity must be occurring,

  whereas others argue for models that allow reciprocity to span domains. The

  analysis of multi-dimensional social networks has recently garnered the

  attention of the mathematics and physics communities. Multilayer networks

  are ubiquitous and have consequences, so processes giving rise to them are

  important social phenomena. Recent models of these processes show how

  ignoring layer interdependencies can lead one to miss why a layer formed the

  way it did, and/or draw erroneous conclusions. Understanding the structuring

  processes that underlie multiplex networks will help understand increasingly

  rich datasets, which give better, richer, and more accurate pictures of

  social interactions.

   Date: 2019?03

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:1903.11183&r=soc

 

 9. Impact of religious participation, social interactions and

     globalisation on meat consumption: evidence from India

   Massimo Filippini (ETH Zurich, Switzerland); Suchita Srinivasan (ETH

    Zurich, Switzerland)

  From both health and environmental policy perspectives, it is advisable to

  ensure that individuals maximise the nutritional gains from eating meat,

  without having a significantly adverse environmental impact, i.e.

  sustainable meat consumption pathways are imperative. This is especially

  true for developing countries, where rising incomes and growing populations

  have meant that meat consumption has also risen. India is an example of a

  country where a large share of the population has been vegetarian due to

  religious and cultural factors, although this is rapidly changing. In this

  paper, we hypothesise that social interactions and globalisation are two

  factors that explain this shift in consumption behaviour, especially amongst

  Hindu households. These hypotheses are based on the theoretical findings of

  Levy and Razin (2012). The empirical results show that Hindus that are

  members of religious groups are less likely to eat meat than non-member

  Hindus, whereas Hindus that are members of non-religious types of groups are

  more likely to eat meat than non-members. We also find that Hindu households

  that frequently use sources of media such as newspapers, the radio or

  television are more likely to consume meat compared to Hindus that do not.

  This paper provides important policy implications, both in terms of the

  formulation of Nationally Recommended Diets in developing countries, and in

  terms of identifying the channel of influence of both social networks and

  globalisation on social and religious norms, consumption behaviour, and

  ultimately, on climate change.

   JEL: D83 Q18 Q54 C23 C26

   Keywords: Meat consumption, Religious norms, Social interactions,

    Globalisation, India

   Date: 2018?11

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eth:wpswif:18-304&r=soc

 

10. The (in)elasticity of moral ignorance

   Marta Serra-Garcia; Nora Szech

  We investigate the elasticity of moral ignorance with respect to monetary

  incentives and social norm information. We propose that individuals suffer

  from higher moral costs when rejecting a certain donation, and thus pay for

  moral ignorance. Consistent with our model, we find significant willingness

  to pay for ignorance, which we calibrate against morally neutral benchmark

  treatments. We show that the demand curve for moral ignorance exhibits a

  sharp kink, of about 50 percent, when moving from small negative to small

  positive monetary incentives. By contrast, while social norms strongly favor

  information acquisition, they have little impact on curbing moral ignorance.

   JEL: D83 D91 C91

   Keywords: information avoidance, morality, unethical behavior, social norms

   Date: 2019

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7555&r=soc

 

11. Immigration and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from a Natural

     Experiment

   Mehic, Adrian (Department of Economics, Lund University)

  Between the 2014 and 2018 Swedish parliamentary elections, the vote share of

  the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats increased significantly. To evaluate

  the possibility of a causal link between immigration and the right-wing

  populist vote, this paper uses data from a nationwide policy experiment,

  under which refugees are allocated randomly to every municipality in the

  country, creating exogenous variation in the number of refugees between

  municipalities. Overall, I find a positive and significant impact of

  immigration on the anti-immigration vote. In areas with strong

  anti-immigration sentiments during the 1990s refugee wave, the effect is

  magnified significantly. However, when considering immigration of a

  particular refugee group dominated by young men, the relationship is

  considerably weaker. I show that this is because immigration of young men

  has a balancing effect on the right-wing populist vote among

  immigration-friendly voter groups.

   JEL: D72 J15 P16

   Keywords: immigration; right-wing populism; natural experiment

   Date: 2019?03?19

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2019_005&r=soc

 

12. Highly skilled and well connected: Migrant inventors in Cross-Border

     M&As

   Diego USECHE; Ernest MIGUELEZ; Francesco LISSONI

  Based on a relational view of international business, we investigate the

  role of migrant inventors in Cross-Border Merger & Acquisitions (CBM&As)

  undertaken by R&D-active firms. We hypothesize that the migrant inventors?

  international social networks can be leveraged upon by their employers in

  order to spot and/or integrate the knowledge bases of acquisition targets in

  the inventors? home country. We nuance our hypothesis by means of several

  conditional logistic regressions on a large matched sample of deals and

  control cases. The impact of migrant inventors increases with the distance

  between countries and for targets located in countries with weak

  administrative/legal systems, as well as when targets are either innovative

  or belong to high-tech sectors or to the same sector as the acquirer, and

  for full versus partial acquisitions.

   JEL: F22 F23

   Keywords: cross-border mergers and acquisitions, migration, inventors, PCT

    patents

   Date: 2019

 URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2019-03&r=soc

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This nep-soc issue is ©2019 by Fabio Sabatini. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.

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