What do we do when we realise that others with whom we interact already know something about rele... more What do we do when we realise that others with whom we interact already know something about relevant qualities of ours? Do we relying on the information that we naturally emit to get our message across, or do we take actions to try to change the situation in our favour? And, does the information that we emit, generated intentionally or unintentionally, allow us to cooperate with others and conflict to be resolved peacefully? Drawing on signalling and 'countersignalling' theories, and a recent behavioural theory, I explore these questions using two experiments in which the relevant qualities are trustworthiness and toughness, and observational data from the 1997 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities concerning violence among prisoners. In the experiments, subjects, who do not know what will follow, initially create a natural indicator of their qualities, and subsequently, have the opportunity to send another indicator, this time fully informed. In one experiment, consistent with countersignalling theory, subjects whose generosity is clear deign to send further information, while those whose generosity can be called under question choose to update their initial action the most. In the other, the toughest subjects put the most effort into getting their message across. Consistent among both, senders' actions correspond to receivers' evaluations. Finally, I find that pertinent information can allow conflicts to be resolved successfully; it is linked with less violence in prison and in a laboratory-based contest.</p
Will fights erupt when resources are scarce and the rules regulating their distribution are absen... more Will fights erupt when resources are scarce and the rules regulating their distribution are absent or ignored? We conjecture that the answer depends on whether credible information about individuals’ toughness is available. When people send credible signs and signals of their toughness disputes may be solved without violence. We use a laboratory experiment in which subjects create information about their toughness and decide whether to take others’ resources and resist in case others’ attempt to take theirs. Subjects perform a potentially painful but safe physical exercise to create information and to determine who wins and loses fights. This, realistically, ranks subjects according to their toughness and implicates toughness, a quality important in real conflict, in fighting. We find that, consistent with theory, information reduces fighting. This suggests that, in addition to the theories traditionally used to explain prisoner behavior, the availability of credible information about toughness influences prison conflict.
We provide a conceptual replication of an experimental study that uncovered a robust correlation ... more We provide a conceptual replication of an experimental study that uncovered a robust correlation between the strength of individuals’ family ties and their distrust of strangers, striving to establish whether the link is causal. Using a different subjects pool and an online setting, we repeat the binary trust-game experiment from Ermisch and Gambetta and enrich it by manipulating the payoffs to create a low-trust and high-trust environment. The key finding is corroborated, but as expected, only in the high-trust environment. The two environments further allow us to impose a diff-and-diff design on the data, which rules out selection of low-trusting individuals into strong-tied families and gives us indirect evidence of causation, namely, that having strong family ties stunts the development of trust in strangers. Our findings support the emancipatory theory of trust proposed by Toshio Yamagishi and could be interpreted as uncovering the micro foundations of classic ethnographic stud...
Religions seem to defy the law-of-demand, which suggests that all else equal, an increase in the ... more Religions seem to defy the law-of-demand, which suggests that all else equal, an increase in the cost of an activity will induce individuals to decrease the resources they spend on that activity. Rather than weakening religious organizations, evidence shows that the sacrifices exacted by religious practices are positively associated with the success of those organizations. We present the first strong evidence that this association is neither spurious nor endogenous. We use a natural experiment that rests on a peculiar time-shifting feature of Ramadan that makes the fasting duration—our measure of sacrifice—vary not just by latitude but from year-to-year. We find that a half-hour increase in fasting time during the median Ramadan day increases the vote shares of Islamist political parties by 11 percent in Turkey’s parliamentary elections between 1973 and 2018, and results in one additional attendee per 1,000 inhabitants for voluntary Quran courses. We further investigate two mechanis...
Much scientific research shows that the sacrifices imposed by religious practices are positively ... more Much scientific research shows that the sacrifices imposed by religious practices are positively associated with the success of religious organizations. We present the first evidence that this association is causal. We employ a natural experiment that rests on a peculiar time-shifting feature of Ramadan that makes the length of fasting time vary from year-to-year and by latitude. We find that an hour increase in fasting during the median Ramadan day increases the vote shares of Islamist political parties by about 6.5 percentage-points in Turkey’s parliamentary elections between 1973 and 2018. This effect is weaker in provinces where the proportion of non-orthodox Muslims is higher, but stronger in provinces where the number of per capita mosques and of religious personnel is higher. Further analyses suggest that the main mechanism underlying our findings is an increased commitment to religion induced by costlier practice. By showing that the success of religious organizations is cau...
This paper considers the modes by which the mafia exercises its influence on a number of legitima... more This paper considers the modes by which the mafia exercises its influence on a number of legitimate industries in both Sicily and the United States. In particular, it discusses the kind of service the mafia provides, the economic consequences of its influence, the conditions which induce the entry of the mafia in specific industries, and the conditions and policies which make it disappear. The authors share the view that mafia protection in legitimate industries, although occasionally rapacious and unreliable, is frequently neither bogus nor limited to intimidating new entrants. Under some (perhaps most) circumstances, the primary beneficiaries are the owners of the firms being coerced. This view is based both on theoretical arguments and empirical evidence. The paper relies on a series of case studies which were autonomously developed by the
Institutions, Governance and the Control of Corruption
Different indicators show that Italy is an outlier in terms of corruption. As developed a country... more Different indicators show that Italy is an outlier in terms of corruption. As developed a country as Italy should have a much lower level of corruption. All the factors scholars have found to be affecting corruption fail to explain this puzzle. I start instead from the assumption that corrupt exchanges thrive when parties can trust each other both to comply with their obligations and not to snitch. Could Italians enjoy a greater ability to cooperate successfully in illegal markets, and could this ability to make their illegal pacts stick explain their anomalous propensity at striking corrupt deals? One could think of mafia enforcement, which certainly helps. Yet, corruption occurs also outside the regions with heavy mafia presence—it seems rather a white-collar affair in which threats are unnecessary and no blood is spilt. I consider a special bonding mechanism, the sharing of compromising information (SCI), and—relying on evidence from case studies and an experiment—I illustrate how SCI works in bringing about cooperation in other illegal markets. But why should Italians be in a better position to rely on SCI to pursue their corrupt deals? The answer, I contend, lies in the peculiarity of Italy’s judicial system, which is at once inefficient yet independent, and jointly these features make it exploitable by villains as a cheap, reliable and unwitting enforcing mechanism for their deals.
What do we do when we realise that others with whom we interact already know something about rele... more What do we do when we realise that others with whom we interact already know something about relevant qualities of ours? Do we relying on the information that we naturally emit to get our message across, or do we take actions to try to change the situation in our favour? And, does the information that we emit, generated intentionally or unintentionally, allow us to cooperate with others and conflict to be resolved peacefully? Drawing on signalling and 'countersignalling' theories, and a recent behavioural theory, I explore these questions using two experiments in which the relevant qualities are trustworthiness and toughness, and observational data from the 1997 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities concerning violence among prisoners. In the experiments, subjects, who do not know what will follow, initially create a natural indicator of their qualities, and subsequently, have the opportunity to send another indicator, this time fully informed. In one experiment, consistent with countersignalling theory, subjects whose generosity is clear deign to send further information, while those whose generosity can be called under question choose to update their initial action the most. In the other, the toughest subjects put the most effort into getting their message across. Consistent among both, senders' actions correspond to receivers' evaluations. Finally, I find that pertinent information can allow conflicts to be resolved successfully; it is linked with less violence in prison and in a laboratory-based contest.</p
Will fights erupt when resources are scarce and the rules regulating their distribution are absen... more Will fights erupt when resources are scarce and the rules regulating their distribution are absent or ignored? We conjecture that the answer depends on whether credible information about individuals’ toughness is available. When people send credible signs and signals of their toughness disputes may be solved without violence. We use a laboratory experiment in which subjects create information about their toughness and decide whether to take others’ resources and resist in case others’ attempt to take theirs. Subjects perform a potentially painful but safe physical exercise to create information and to determine who wins and loses fights. This, realistically, ranks subjects according to their toughness and implicates toughness, a quality important in real conflict, in fighting. We find that, consistent with theory, information reduces fighting. This suggests that, in addition to the theories traditionally used to explain prisoner behavior, the availability of credible information about toughness influences prison conflict.
We provide a conceptual replication of an experimental study that uncovered a robust correlation ... more We provide a conceptual replication of an experimental study that uncovered a robust correlation between the strength of individuals’ family ties and their distrust of strangers, striving to establish whether the link is causal. Using a different subjects pool and an online setting, we repeat the binary trust-game experiment from Ermisch and Gambetta and enrich it by manipulating the payoffs to create a low-trust and high-trust environment. The key finding is corroborated, but as expected, only in the high-trust environment. The two environments further allow us to impose a diff-and-diff design on the data, which rules out selection of low-trusting individuals into strong-tied families and gives us indirect evidence of causation, namely, that having strong family ties stunts the development of trust in strangers. Our findings support the emancipatory theory of trust proposed by Toshio Yamagishi and could be interpreted as uncovering the micro foundations of classic ethnographic stud...
Religions seem to defy the law-of-demand, which suggests that all else equal, an increase in the ... more Religions seem to defy the law-of-demand, which suggests that all else equal, an increase in the cost of an activity will induce individuals to decrease the resources they spend on that activity. Rather than weakening religious organizations, evidence shows that the sacrifices exacted by religious practices are positively associated with the success of those organizations. We present the first strong evidence that this association is neither spurious nor endogenous. We use a natural experiment that rests on a peculiar time-shifting feature of Ramadan that makes the fasting duration—our measure of sacrifice—vary not just by latitude but from year-to-year. We find that a half-hour increase in fasting time during the median Ramadan day increases the vote shares of Islamist political parties by 11 percent in Turkey’s parliamentary elections between 1973 and 2018, and results in one additional attendee per 1,000 inhabitants for voluntary Quran courses. We further investigate two mechanis...
Much scientific research shows that the sacrifices imposed by religious practices are positively ... more Much scientific research shows that the sacrifices imposed by religious practices are positively associated with the success of religious organizations. We present the first evidence that this association is causal. We employ a natural experiment that rests on a peculiar time-shifting feature of Ramadan that makes the length of fasting time vary from year-to-year and by latitude. We find that an hour increase in fasting during the median Ramadan day increases the vote shares of Islamist political parties by about 6.5 percentage-points in Turkey’s parliamentary elections between 1973 and 2018. This effect is weaker in provinces where the proportion of non-orthodox Muslims is higher, but stronger in provinces where the number of per capita mosques and of religious personnel is higher. Further analyses suggest that the main mechanism underlying our findings is an increased commitment to religion induced by costlier practice. By showing that the success of religious organizations is cau...
This paper considers the modes by which the mafia exercises its influence on a number of legitima... more This paper considers the modes by which the mafia exercises its influence on a number of legitimate industries in both Sicily and the United States. In particular, it discusses the kind of service the mafia provides, the economic consequences of its influence, the conditions which induce the entry of the mafia in specific industries, and the conditions and policies which make it disappear. The authors share the view that mafia protection in legitimate industries, although occasionally rapacious and unreliable, is frequently neither bogus nor limited to intimidating new entrants. Under some (perhaps most) circumstances, the primary beneficiaries are the owners of the firms being coerced. This view is based both on theoretical arguments and empirical evidence. The paper relies on a series of case studies which were autonomously developed by the
Institutions, Governance and the Control of Corruption
Different indicators show that Italy is an outlier in terms of corruption. As developed a country... more Different indicators show that Italy is an outlier in terms of corruption. As developed a country as Italy should have a much lower level of corruption. All the factors scholars have found to be affecting corruption fail to explain this puzzle. I start instead from the assumption that corrupt exchanges thrive when parties can trust each other both to comply with their obligations and not to snitch. Could Italians enjoy a greater ability to cooperate successfully in illegal markets, and could this ability to make their illegal pacts stick explain their anomalous propensity at striking corrupt deals? One could think of mafia enforcement, which certainly helps. Yet, corruption occurs also outside the regions with heavy mafia presence—it seems rather a white-collar affair in which threats are unnecessary and no blood is spilt. I consider a special bonding mechanism, the sharing of compromising information (SCI), and—relying on evidence from case studies and an experiment—I illustrate how SCI works in bringing about cooperation in other illegal markets. But why should Italians be in a better position to rely on SCI to pursue their corrupt deals? The answer, I contend, lies in the peculiarity of Italy’s judicial system, which is at once inefficient yet independent, and jointly these features make it exploitable by villains as a cheap, reliable and unwitting enforcing mechanism for their deals.
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Papers by Diego Gambetta