Social Preferences Among the People of Sanquianga in Colombia

The afro-descendent people of the Sanquianga region in the Colombian Pacific Coast live under particularly extreme poverty conditions. Although highly integrated to markets through very frequent interactions, their access to basic social services and stable income generating activities are constrained, and their dependence on their local commons for food, fisheries, wood and firewood is high. Nevertheless, their pro-social preferences are rather high compared to other regions of Colombia and the world. High levels of altruism, sharing, reciprocity and hyper-fairness were observed in a series of Dictator, Ultimatum and Third-Party Punishment experiments conducted with a sample of 186 adults of two villages in the region. One of the more striking findings is that personal material wealth is associated with lower levels of generosity in the DG and UG games. Some explanations based on the historical roots of these small-scale societies may explain such pro-social behavior.poverty, generosity, pro-sociality, experimental economics, dictator,ultimatum, third-party punishment, Sanquianga, Pacific Coast, afro-descendants

Social Norms and Behavior in the Local Commons Through the Lens of Field Experiments

Behavior in the local commons is usually embedded in a context of regulations and social norms that the group of users face. Such norms and rules affect how individuals value material and non-material incentives and therefore determine their decision to cooperate or over extract the resources from the common-pool. This paper discusses the importance of social norms in shaping behavior in the commons through the lens of experiments, and in particular experiments conducted in the field with people that usually face these social dilemmas in their daily life. Through a large sample of experimental sessions with around one thousand people between villagers and students, I test some hypothesis about behavior in the commons when regulations and social norms constrain the choices of people. The results suggest that people evaluate several components of the intrinsic and material motivations in their decision to cooperate. While responding in the expected direction to a imperfectly monitored fine on over extraction, the expected cost of the regulation is not a sufficient explanatory factor for the changes in behavior by the participants in the experiments. Even with zero cost of violations, people can respond positively to an external regulator that issues a normative statement about a rule that is aimed at solving the social dilemma.Key words: social norms, regulations, cooperation, collective action, common-pool resources, experiemental economics, field experiments

Attitudes and attributes: a field experiment with public officials and transfer recipients In Colombia

Any system of transfer payments must be administered by officials with some degree of discretionary power over the manner in which funds are allocated. Attitudes of such officials regarding the worthiness of various recipients therefore have implications for resource allocation. Using a sample of actual public servants working in education, health, child care and nutrition programs, and a sample of potential and actual beneficiaries of such programs, we attempt to identify the set of recipient attributes that induce the most generous responses from officials. This is done using a design we call the distributive dictator game" which requires officials to rank recipients, with the understanding that a higher ranking corresponds to an increased likelihood of getting a voucher convertible into cash. Interpreting the ranking as the outcome of a random utility model, we estimate the effects of recipient attributes using a rank-order logistic regression. We find that public officials tend to favor women, married persons, individuals with many minor dependents, and refugees from political violence. "Public officials, transfer recipients, field experiments, rank-order logistic regression.

Risk Attitudes and Well-being in Latin America

A common premise in both the theoretical and policy literature on development is that people remain poor because they are too impatient to save and too risk averse to take the sort of chances needed to accumulate wealth. The empirical literature, however, suggests that this assumption is far from proven. We report on field experiments designed to address many of the problems confounding previous analyses of the links between risk preferences and well-being. Our sample includes more than 3,000 participants who were drawn representatively from six Latin American cities: Bogotá, Buenos Aries, Caracas, Lima, Montevideo, San José. In addition to the experiment which reveals interestingcross-country differences, participants completed an extensive survey that provides data on a variety of well-being indicators and a number of important controls. Focusing on risk preferences, we find little evidence of robust links between risk aversion and wellbeing. However, when we analyze the results of three treatments that add elements of reality to the decision problem, we see that these, more subtle, instruments correlate better with well-being, even after controlling for a variety of other important factors like the accumulation of human capital and access to credit.risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, loss aversion, risk pooling, well-being, Latin America

REGULACIONES Y NORMAS EN LO PÚBLICO Y LO COLECTIVO: EXPLORACIONES DESDE EL LABORATORIO ECONÓMICO

La internalización de las externalidades de grupo derivadas del dilema entre el interés individual y el interés social requieren el diseño de instituciones a través del mercado, el estado o de formas auto-gobernadas que generen en los agentes un cambio en los incentivos pecuniarios o no materiales que los lleven a tomar decisiones que sean socialmente deseables. El enfoque económico convencional en el análisis de la ejecución o aplicación de las leyes (enforcement) se basa principalmente en los trabajos de Becker en donde se propone que quienes optan por incumplir las leyes están percibiendo un beneficio mas alto que el costo esperado de la regulación por parte del estado, es decir la sanción para el infractor multiplicada por la probabilidad de detección. A través de una serie de experimentos económicos se explora esta hipótesis para el caso de un problema típico de bienes públicos o de extracción de recursos en donde se presenta una externalidad de grupo y una regulación que es parcialmente monitoreada y sancionada. Los resultados sugieren que la respuesta estratégica de los individuos a los diferentes costos esperados de la regulación confirma solo parcialmente la hipótesis en la medida en que las diferencias son menos que proporcionales a los valores estimados del costo esperado de la regulación para los agentes. Mas aún, cuando se comparan estos resultados con réplicas exactas de estos experimentos aplicadas en campo a comunidades rurales en donde se vive cotidianamente este problema, las diferencias en las decisiones individuales entre los costos esperados prácticamente desaparecen. Se propone al final que en conjunción con los costos materiales del incumplimiento, los individuos incorporan elementos adicionales en su proceso cognitivo que son consistentes con hallazgos de la economía experimental, y la economía del comportamiento.Economía experimental

Composición de la forma urbana a partir del espacio público: caso de estudio: Centro Histórico Tradicional de Bogotá y Avenida de los Comuneros

Se evaluará un proceso de re-composición de la forma urbana del Centro Histórico Tradicional de la ciudad de Bogotá, usando el espacio público como elemento y estructura de sutura urbana, sutura de la forma y sutura social, de los microterritorio urbanos. Los nodos de articulación de la forma urbana serán los elementos constitutivos del espacio público, asociados a los espacios arquitectónicos, urbanos y naturales que por su uso y/o afectación, puedan ser vinculados como elementos constitutivos de la categoría del espacio público efectivo. El eje de la Avenida de los Comuneros se establece como una oportunidad urbanística, debido a que la intervención para la ampliación de la sección vial, produjo un detrimento urbano-arquitectónico en ambos lados de la vía, que está sujeto a la destrucción de las morfologías regulares por la segmentación de las manzanas, resultando un perfil “configurado” por culatas, sin relación edificio-calle, contribuyendo a la perdida de la vitalidad y el carácter del territorio específico.A process of re-composition the urban form of Historic Traditional Center of Bogotá will be evaluated using the public space as an element and structure of urban suture, form suture and socially suture, of the urban micro territories. The form articulating nodes will be determinates as the components of the public space, associated with possible architectural spaces, urban and natural sites that because of its use and/or commitment could be linked as constituent elements of the effective public space category. The axis of the “Avenida de los Comuneros” is set as an urban planning opportunity, because the intervention to expand the avenue section was an urban-architectural detriment on both sides of the road, which are subject of destruction of the regular morphologies by block segmentation, ending up in a profile “set” by stocks, with no building-street relationship, contributing to the vitality`s loss and identity of the specific territory.Peer Reviewe

LOCAL COMMONS AND CROSS-EFFECTS OF POPULATION AND INEQUALITY ON THE LOCAL PROVISION OF ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES

A farm-level and village level models are discussed and tested empirically using spatial data, for exploring the cross-effects between population density and land inequality in the "tragedy of the commons". Malthus himself argued that "An unfavourable distribution of produce, by prematurely diminishing the demand for labour, might retard the increase of food at an early period, in the same manner as if cultivation and population had been further advanced;" [Malthus (1830): pp. 239]. By exploring the farm and village level institutions and incentives for allocating land and labor to conservation or agriculture, the paper argues that inequality exacerbates the population pressure over the provision of environmental services, and that under more equal distribution of land, more sustainable technological adaptations may happen in which better farm and land-use practices emerge, decreasing the level of land degradation.tragedy of the commons

Collective Action forWatershed Management: Field Experiments in Colombia and Kenya

The dilemma of collective action around water use and management involves solving both the problems of provision and appropriation. Cooperation in the provision can be affected by the rival nature of the appropriation and the asymmetries in the access. We report two field experiments conducted in Colombia and Kenya. The Irrigation Game was used to explore the provision and appropriation decisions under asymmetric or sequential appropriation, complemented with a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism experiment which looks at provision decisions under symmetric appropriation. The overall results were consistent with the patterns of previous studies: the zero contribution hypotheses is rejected whereas the most effective institution to increase cooperation was face-to-face communication, and above external regulations, although we find that communication works much more effectively in Colombia. We also find that the asymmetric appropriation did reduce cooperation, though the magnitude of the social loss and the effectiveness of alternative institutional options varied across sites.Collective Action, Watersheds, Field Experiments, Colombia, Kenya

COOPERATION IN LARGE NETWORKS: AN EXPERIMENTAL

We present a new design of a simple public goods experiment with a large number of players, where up to 80 people in a computer lab have the possibility to connect with others in the room to induce more cooperators to contribute to the public good and overcome the social dilemma. This experimental design explores the possibility of social networks to be used and institutional devices to create the same behavioral responses we observe with small groups (e.g. commitments, social norms, reciprocity, trust, shame, guilt) that seem to induce cooperativebehavior in the private provision of public goods. The results of our experiment suggest that the structure of the network affects not only the players´ ability to communicate, but their willingness to do so as well. Finally, we find that the local connectivity structure of the network has an important role as determinant of the willingness of the players to engage in a more costly type of collective action, namely the endogenous creation of new links to individuals previously out of reach.Social capital, social networks, collective action, cooperation, VCM,experiments, public goods provision

INSTITUTIONS INFLUENCE PREFERENCES: EVIDENCE FROM A COMMON POOL RESOURCE EXPERIMENT

We model the dynamic effects of external enforcement on the exploitation of a common pool resource. Fitting our model to the results of experimental data we find that institutions influence social preferences. We solve two puzzles in the data: the increase and later erosion of cooperation when commoners vote against the imposition of a fine, and the high deterrence power of low fines. When fines are rejected, internalization of a social norm explains the increased cooperation; violations (accidental or not), coupled with reciprocal preferences, account for the erosion. Low fines stabilize cooperation by preventing a spiral of negative reciprocation.Field experiments, common pool resources, cooperation, enforcement, regulation, social preferences, social norms, learning models