UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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    The emergence of symbolic norms
    (2023) Pan, Xinyue; Gelfand, Michele J.; Nau, Dana S.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Human groups are experts in developing and maintaining social norms. Many social norms have clear practical functions, such as regulating competition or facilitating coordination. Some other norms, however, have arbitrary functions and limited direct material consequences for the self or the group, but are nevertheless enforced. I define such norms as symbolic norms. Symbolic norms are prevalent across human societies. Given the discrepancy between the social importance and the functional opacity of these norms, it is important to understand how a seemingly neutral behavior can emerge as a symbolic norm and be adopted by the population. In this dissertation, I argue that a neutral behavior is more likely to evolve as a symbolic norm when it shows statistical correlation with a practical behavior on the population level. I call this the norm spillover effect. The norm spillover effect predicts that if, on the population level, followers of a practically beneficial norm happen to conduct a certain neutral behavior more often than practical norm violators, the social norm will spill over from the practical domain to the neutral domain. Thus, people will adopt and enforce that neutral behavior, and a symbolic norm will emerge. This dissertation uses agent-based models and an empirical experiment to test the norm spillover effect across two levels of analyses. First, agent-based models are used to test the evolutionary force behind the norm spillover effect on the population level. I argue that the statistical correlation between a practical and a neutral behavior creates an ecology that fosters symbolic norm following and enforcement. Second, an empirical experiment is conducted to examine the psychology of the norm spillover effect on the individual level. I argue that the perceived correlation between a practical and a neutral behavior increases the perceived direct function of and the pressure to conform to the symbolic norm.
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    Essays on Intitutional Governance
    (2011) Hu, Bingjie; Murrell, Peter; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This thesis consists of three chapters on the choice of institutional governance. The first chapter provides empirical evidence on the effect of local norms on the contractual choice, using a comprehensive dataset on US agricultural leasing contracts. We focus on the choice between cash-rent and share-rent contracts and examine whether the prevalence of share-rent contracts has an effect on contractual choice. We use a generalized spatial two-stage least squares approach to address endogeneity issues. Our results show that there is a strong tendency for agents to choose the contractual form that conforms to local norms. Our study also suggests that share-rent contracts are more likely to be chosen when there is a higher likelihood or more severe consequence of opportunistic behavior by agents. This suggests that share contracts reduce transaction costs by helping to foster a productive governance atmosphere for the contracting parties. The second chapter explores whether the choice of institutions depends on the historical experience and the stock of knowledge of economic agents. We provide firm-level evidence on the choice of between legal and relational governance, in the context of the transition economy of Romania. Our results show that previously state-owned businesses are more likely to rely on legal governance than other firms. We also find evidence that the legal knowledge held by firm managers affects the choice of governance, which is consistent with the path-dependence theory of institutional development. The third chapter is based on a cross-country study of the link between public spending on health care, quality of institutional governance and child health outcomes. We show that both public spending on health care and the quality of governance matter for the reduction of child and infant mortality rates.