Moral universalism, the extent to which individuals exhibit similar altruism and trust towards in-group and out-group members, varies widely across societies. We test the hypothesis from anthropology that the requirements of transhumant pastoralism - a livelihood in which populations seasonally...

In this paper--the first in a series of two papers that use data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook to study social capital--we measure and analyze three types of social capital by ZIP code in the United States: (i) connectedness between different types of people, such as those with low vs....

Low levels of social interaction across class lines have generated widespread concern and are associated with worse outcomes, such as lower rates of upward income mobility. Here, we analyze the determinants of cross-class interaction using data from Facebook, building upon the analysis in the...

This study examines whether national culture influences peer effects on dividend policies. We find robust empirical evidence suggesting that peer firms significantly influence dividend policies across countries. Moreover, such influence is salient for firms domiciled in countries with more...

This paper exploits student-level administrative data on the population of Italian university students, from 2006 to 2014, to analyse the effects of high performing (HP) male or female peers on individual academic performance, according to the gender of the student. The identification strategy...

I examine the effects of peer ethnic composition on college students' educational outcomes. I use a sample of freshmen cohorts from 1991 to 2002 at Texas universities from the Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project data. This paper identifies the Hispanic peer effects by exploiting the...