Keeping up with the e-Joneses: Do online social networks raise social comparisons?

Online social networks such as Facebook disclose an unprecedented volume of personal information amplifying the occasions for social comparisons. We test the hypothesis that the use of social networking sites (SNS) increases people's dissatisfaction with their income. After addressing endogeneity issues, our results suggest that SNS users have a higher probability to compare their achievements with those of others. This effect seems stronger than the one exerted by TV watching, it is particularly strong for younger people, and it affects men and women in a similar way.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure

Online networks and subjective well-being

We argue that the use of online networks may threaten subjective well-being in several ways, due to the inherent attributes of Internet-mediated interaction and through its effects on social trust and sociability. We test our hypotheses on a representative sample of the Italian population. We find a significantly negative correlation between online networking and well-being. This result is partially confirmed after accounting for endogeneity. We explore the direct and indirect effects of the use of social networking sites (SNS) on well-being in a SEM analysis. We find that online networking plays a positive role in subjective well-being through its impact on physical interactions, whereas SNS use is associated with lower social trust. The overall effect of networking on individual welfare is significantly negative.Comment: 40 page

Education, social capital and entrepreneurial selection in Italy

There is wide consensus that entrepreneurial talent is the ability to discover and exploit market opportunities by taking the relevant risky decisions. Discovery and exploitation are separate but interlinked features of entrepreneurship requiring, in different proportions, the exploitation of innate and acquired skills. Institutions and technology, by determining the nature of the discovery and exploitation process and the need for such skills, play an essential role in shaping the nature of entrepreneurial talent and the specific role of education in entrepreneurial selection and performance. Empirical studies on entrepreneurship do not offer a neat picture of the actual contribution of education to entrepreneurial human capital or entrepreneurial talent. This unsatisfactory outcome is not surprising and is due to an inadequate assessment of the context-dependent factors shaping the latter. Building on these premises, the aim of our research work is to carry out a in depth analysis of the determinants of entrepreneurship in Italy, thus accounting for the role that variables like the educational qualification, the family background, and social capital play in determining the entrepreneurial selection. This paper attempts to constitute a first step for the improvement of our understanding by means of a preliminary, exploratory, analysis on the Italian data and a series of probit analyses aimed at identifying the main determinants founding the entrepreneurial choice. Rough data are taken from an original dataset built by the authors partly drawing on the Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) carried out by the Bank of Italy. The latter has been integrated with a wide variety of environmental variables drawn from different data sources describing the social and institutional context of the entrepreneurial activity.Education; Work status; Employment; Self-employment; Entrepreneurship; Human capital; Social capital; Cognitive abilities

Online Networks, Social Interaction and Segregation: An Evolutionary Approach

We have developed an evolutionary game model, where agents can choose between two forms of social participation: interaction via online social networks and interaction by exclusive means of face-to-face encounters. We illustrate the societal dynamics that the model predicts, in light of the empirical evidence provided by previous literature. We then assess their welfare implications. We show that dynamics, starting from a world in which online social interaction is less gratifying than offline encounters, will lead to the extinction of the sub-population of online networks users, thereby making Facebook and alike disappear in the long run. Furthermore, we show that the higher the propensity for discrimination between the two sub-populations of socially active individuals, the greater the probability that individuals will ultimately segregate themselves, making society fall into a social poverty trap

Will Facebook save or destroy social capital? An empirical investigation into the effect of online interactions on trust and networks

Studies in the social capital literature have documented two stylised facts: first, a decline in measures of social participation has occurred in many OECD countries. Second, and more recently, the success of social networking sites (SNSs) has resulted in a steep rise in online social participation. Our study adds to this body of research by conducting the first empirical assessment of how online networking affects two economically relevant aspects of social capital, i.e. trust and sociability. We find that participation in SNSs such as Facebook and Twitter has a positive effect on face-to-face interactions. However, social trust decreases with online interactions. We argue that the rising practice of hate speech may play a crucial role in the destruction of trust

Beta-diversity of Central European forests decreases along an elevational gradient due to the variation in local community assembly processes

Beta-diversity has been repeatedly shown to decline with increasing elevation, but the causes of this pattern remain unclear, partly because they are confounded by coincident variation in alpha- and gamma-diversity. We used 8,795 forest vegetation-plot records from the Czech National Phytosociological Database to compare the observed patterns of beta diversity to null-model expectations (beta-deviation) controlling for the effects of alpha- and gamma-diversity. We tested whether \b{eta}-diversity patterns along a 1,200 m elevation gradient exclusively depend on the effect of varying species pool size, or also on the variation of the magnitude of community assembly mechanisms determining the distribution of species across communities (e.g., environmental filtering, dispersal limitation). The null model we used is a novel extension of an existing null-model designed for presence/absence data and was specifically designed to disrupt the effect of community assembly mechanisms, while retaining some key features of observed communities such as average species richness and species abundance distribution. Analyses were replicated in ten subregions with comparable elevation ranges. Beta-diversity declined along the elevation gradient due to a decrease in gamma-diversity, which was steeper than the decrease in alpha-diversity. This pattern persisted after controlling for alpha- and gamma-diversity variation, and the results were robust when different resampling schemes and diversity metrics were used. We conclude that in temperate forests the pattern of decreasing beta-diversity with elevation does not exclusively depend on variation in species pool size, as has been hypothesized, but also on variation in community assembly mechanisms. The results were consistent across resampling schemes and diversity measures, thus supporting the use of vegetation plot databases for understanding...Comment: Accepted version 25 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

CARBONIFEROUS PLANT FOSSILS FROM THE SAN LORENZO SCHISTS (PISANI MOUNTAINS, TUSCANY, ITALY): A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF THE PALAEOBOTANICAL COLLECTION OF THE MUSEO NATURALISTICO ARCHEOLOGICO DELL’APPENNINO PISTOIESE

The Museo Naturalistico Archeologico dell’Appennino Pistoiese (MUNAP) hosts one of the most abundant and diverse collections of Late Palaeozoic plant fossils from the San Lorenzo Schists of the Pisani Mountains. More than 1200 rock slabs yielding plant fossils were collected from six different outcrops in Guappero Valley in the San Lorenzo a Vaccoli area (NE of the Pisani Mountains, near Lucca), the type-locality of the formation. The present study concerns two outcrops at Via Pari that are characterized by a wide range of plant fossils (20 taxa) belonging to the lycopsids (Stigmaria), sphenopsids (Calamites, Asterophyllites, Calamostachys, Sphenophyllum, Bowmanites), ferns (Acitheca, Diplazites, Cyathocarpus), seed ferns (Alethopteris, ?Autunia, gen. indet.), cordaites (Cordaites) and seeds (Carpolithes). This first description of the plant fossil collection and the revision of its stratigraphical context with respect to the surrounding famous fossiliferous sections of the Guappero Valley refine the stratigraphic and palaeoenvironmental framework of the Late Palaeozoic successions of the Pisani Mts. and more generally of the Apennine chain. The qualitative and quantitative analyses show significant environmental variations between neighbouring outcrops in the Via Pari area – i.e., more humid conditions in ‘Via Pari Buca’ than in ‘Via Pari Smottamento’ – and suggest a latest Carboniferous (Gzhelian) instead of an early Permian age as proposed by previous authors. Moreover, the differences in composition between the plant assemblages of the Via Pari sections with the historical assemblage of the nearby Monte Vignale outcrop (containing typical Permian and more xerophytic elements) in the De Stefani Collection of the Florence Natural History Museum is explained by a younger age (early Permian) of the latter