People behave pro-socially in a wide variety of situations that standard economic theory is unable to explain. Social comparison is one explanation for such pro-social behavior: people contributeif others contribute or cooperate as well....

This paper investigates the relation between social capital and crime. The analysis contributes to explaining why crime is so heterogeneous across space. By employing current and historical data for Dutch municipalities and by providing novel indicators to measure social capital, we find a link...

This paper investigates the relationship between a CEO’s social network, firm identity, andfirm performance. There are two competing theories that predict contradictory outcomes.Following social network theory, one would expect a positive relation between social networksand firm performance,...

Most research in economics models agents somehow motivated by out-comes. Here, we model agents motivated by procedures instead, whereprocedures are dened independently of an outcome. To that end, wedesign procedures which yield the same expected outcomes or carry thesame information on other's...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

Parental involvement in their children’s lives can have a lasting impact on wellbeing.More involved parents convey to their children that they are interested intheir development, and this in turn signals to the child that their future is valued.However, what happens in socio-economically...

This paper introduces the Small World model (Watts and Strogatz, Nature,1998) into the theory of economic growth and investigates how increasing economic integrationaects rm size and effciency, norm enforcement, and aggregate economic performance.When economic integration is low and local...

This paper analyzes data from a novel field experiment designed to test the impact of twodifferent insurance products and a secret saving device on solidarity in risk-sharing groupsamong rural villagers in the Philippines. Risk is simulated by a lottery. Risk-sharing ispossible in solidarity...

Jon Elster gehört zu den profiliertesten Sozialwissenschaftlern der internationalen‚scientific community’. Der vorliegende Beitrag entwickelt eine Lesart für sein bisher vorliegendes Gesamtwerk: In einem ersten Schritt wird Elsters Kritik an funktionalistischen Fehlschlüssen in den...

This paper provides unheard direct evidence that comparisons exert a significant effect onsubjective well-being. It also evaluates the relative importance of different types ofbenchmarks...