This paper estimates the intergenerational transmission of trust by studying children of immigrants in 29 European countries with ancestry in 87 nations. There is significant transmission of trust on the mother's side, and the transmission is significantly stronger than on the father's side. The...

This paper uses a pseudo-panel approach at an age-based cohort level to investigate the extent to which social capital accounts for differences in entrepreneurial activities. The findings suggest that trust measured by trust either in strangers or in public institutions facilitates...

We develop a unified model embedding different behavioral mechanisms of social interactions and design a statistical model selection test to differentiate between them in empirical applications. This framework is applied to study peer effects in education (effort in studying) and sport...

This paper reports a negative relationship between the size of the shadow economy and generalized trust, in a sample of countries, both developed and developing. That relationship is robust to controlling for a large set of economic, policy, and institutional variables, to changing the estimate...

Studies have shown that there are differences in cooperative behavior across countries. Furthermore, differences in the use and the reaction on the introduction of a norm enforcement mechanism have been documented in cross-cultural studies, recently. We present data which prove that stark...

Why do seemingly irrational superstitions persist? We analyze the widely held belief among Asians that children born in the Year of the dragon are superior. We use pooled cross section data from the U.S. Current Population Survey to show that Asian immigrants to the United States born in the...

Based on three large panel surveys, this paper shows that happiness gaps between spouses are a good predictor of future divorce. The effect of happiness gaps is asymmetric: couples are more likely to break-up when the woman is the less happy partner. De facto, divorces appear to be initiated...

In several situations the consequences of an actor’s choices are also affected by the actions of other actors. This is one of the aspects which determines the complexity of social systems and make them behave as a whole. Systems characterized by such a trade-off between individual choices and...

There is a lot of evidence that identity matters for behaviour. There is a widespread belief that societies will function better if they manage to establish a common sense of identity among the population and contemporary fears in many countries that this common identity is threatened. This...

This paper seeks to understand the role that peer comparisons play in the determination of executive compensation. I exploit a recent change in the Securities and Exchange Commission's regulations that requires firms to disclose the peer companies used for determining the compensation of their...