In industrial districts social norms are as important as formal institutions in coordinating actors’ behaviour. While the literature on agro-industrial districts has generally stressed the role of trust, the paper states that power can be as effective as trust in solving coordination problems stemming from contract incompleteness and opportunistic behaviours. The paper presents the results of a...

This paper experimentally measures the ‘social capital’ of altruism, trust and reciprocity and empirically explores the impact of these norms on economic well-being. Using an experimental design that distinguishes trust and reciprocity from altruism, data were collected from individuals in a random sample of South African communities. Analyzed at the community level, these data suggest that whi...

How do norms of trust and reciprocity arise? We investigate this question by examining behavior in an experiment where subjects play a series of indefinitely repeated trust games. Players are randomly and anonymously matched each period. The parameters of the game are chosen so as to support trust and reciprocity as a sequential equilibrium when no reputational information is available. The mai...

divine religions have a significant impact on formation of social norms and strengthening of social capital through the promotion of the moral virtues. the purpose of this study is to demonstrate the impact of doctrines, rituals and ethical teachings of islam on muslims’ social capital in the 40 countries using the generalized trust index and the ordinary least squares method. research findings...

Can Contracts Signal Social Norms? Experimental Evidence We investigate whether incentive schemes signal social norms and thus affect behavior beyond their direct economic consequences. A principal-agent experiment is studied in which prior to contract choice principals are informed about past actions of other agents and thus have more information about “norms of behavior”. Compared to a settin...

today, women`s social health has become an important and critical issue. social health is the reflection of society`s conditions and it is derived from multiple social factors. intervention in these factors is beyond the medical profession and sociologists are required in this field. on the other hand, trust has become a vital topic in human communities in the present era. considering the effec...

This position paper explores the possibility of using social proxies – minimalist visualizations of people and their activities in online environments – to increase the likelihood of socially positive behaviors (trust, compliance, cooperation) in online systems. The paper begins by discussing the assumption underpinning the work: that making participants mutually visible produces social pressur...

It has become increasingly common for a rich associational life to be identified as a key predictor of social capital, defined by Robert Putnam (1993:167) as ‘features of social organisation, such as trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions'. The concept has been employed across a range of concerns. For example, Fukuyama (1995) h...