Norms | Culture
Norms
Norms is another research topic that has been extensively studied by ESOP’s researchers, both theoretically and in experiments. One set of questions relate to how norms are established and sustained. Kjell Arne Brekke, Karen Evelyn Hauge, Jo Thori Lind, and Karine Nyborg have conducted an experiment to separate the more cooperative players, who are unlikely to shirk, from the less cooperative players, by allowing players to join groups based on willingness to donate money to the Red Cross. Their analysis shows that groups with players who decide to donate to the Red Cross also behave the most cooperatively. Ingvild Almås, Alexander Cappelen, Erik Sørensen, and Bertil Tungodden have studied an experiment to see what factors the participants hold each other responsible for. Karl Ove Moene and Jean-Marie Baland have studied informal savings groups in a Kenyan slum. They looked at how the participants enforce the obligations to the group, and how the organizational structure itself can be designed to address enforcement issues.
Culture
Culture is another factor framing the social organization. Raquel Fernandez has several works on the economics of culture. In one project she studies the effect of culture on economic outcomes by examining the work and fertility behaviour of second-generation American women from different cultures. She finds that the cultural proxies have positive and significant explanatory power for individual work and fertility outcomes. Moreover, she finds that the effect of culture is amplified for ethnic groups that tend to cluster in the same neighbourhoods.