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Was Banfield right? New insights from a nationwide laboratory experiment
- Source :
- Journal of Regional Science
- Publication Year :
- 2021
-
Abstract
- Since the pioneering study by Banfield, the North‐South gap in Italian social capital has been considered by international scholars as an example of how cultural diversity within a country can generate different developmental outcomes. Most studies, however, suffer from limited external validity and measurement error. This paper exploits a new and representative online lab‐experiment to assess social‐capital patterns in Italy. Unlike previous experiments, we do not inform participants about the geographic origins of their counterparts. This feature allows us to assess the North‐South gap in universal, as opposed to parochial, behavior. Results suggest that Southerners and Northerners do not systematically differ in generalized prosocial preferences. Only trustworthiness is higher among. Northerners, while they are statistically similar to Southerners in many other economic preferences such as cooperation, trust, expected trustworthiness, altruism, and risk tolerance. We also show that the gap in trustworthiness stems from the lower reciprocity of Southerners in response to large transfers, and it is characterized by the intergenerational transmission of norms. Possible policy implications are discussed.
- Subjects :
- Exploit
media_common.quotation_subject
0211 other engineering and technologies
cooperation
02 engineering and technology
Environmental Science (miscellaneous)
Development
culture
north-south divide
online experiments
reciprocity
social capital
trust
Altruism
External validity
Reciprocity (social psychology)
Cultural diversity
COOPERATION, CULTURE, NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE, ONLINE EXPERIMENTS, RECIPROCITY, SOCIAL CAPITAL, TRUST
0502 economics and business
Sociology
050207 economics
north‐south divide
Research Articles
media_common
05 social sciences
021107 urban & regional planning
Prosocial behavior
Social psychology
North–South divide
Social capital
Research Article
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Regional Science
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....687e06077c7e98b88342842d2aa1574c