We survey the empirical literature in economics on the impact of media technologies on social capital. Motivated by a simple model of information and collective action, we cover a range of different outcomes related to social capital, from social and political participation to interpersonal...

Exploiting a unique empirical setting, 1,000 vendors in 90 traditional food markets in Lima, we document that historic social ties among market founders are associated, decades later, with stricter formal (third party) enforcement of market rules, more collective action, and the greater...

We study forestry in the Sámi people homeland region to understand an ongoing conflict between conventional forest logging and maintaining forests as reindeer pastures for indigenous people. We use a detailed model that simultaneously includes timber production, carbon storage in living...

This chapter examines socioeconomic inequality in Latin America through the lens of race and ethnicity. We primarily use national census data from the International Public Use Micro Data Sample (IPUMS). Since censuses use inconsistent measures of race and ethnicity, we also draw on two...

We analyse interethnic cooperation in an infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma when members of one group are unable to target punishment towards individual defectors from the other group. We first show that indiscriminate outgroup punishment may sustain cooperation in this setting. Our main...

We consider a situation where groups negotiate over the allocation of a surplus (which is used to fund group specific goods). Each group is composed of agents who have differing valuations for public goods. Members choose a representative to take decisions on their behalf. Specifically,...