Collaborative Research: Social Norms, Trust, and Intergenerational Flow of Innovations

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Increased productivity and economic growth partly depends on adoption of improved technology which in turn depends on the transmission of information about new technologies. Young people tend to learn about new technologies before their parents who own productive resources and are wedded to old technologies and may not trust the new information they learn from the young. On the other hand, young people may mistrust elders and may not reveal appropriate information they think elders will not accept, thus slowing technical progress and economic growth. This research project will use theory and experiments to study how social norms affect the intergenerational flow of technological information and how best to solve this friction in information flow. In addition to intergenerational transmission of information, the research also studies whether there is a gender dimension to the intergenerational flow of technological information. The results of this study could influence the design of effective information interventions that induce intergenerational flows of knowledge to speed up technical progress. The results will offer valuable information on the constraints in the economic empowerment of young women. The results of this research has the potential to increase the pace of innovation and accelerate economic growth, and improve the living standards of Americans. This research project will leverage a collaboration with NGO partners in 150 junior high schools to study the barriers in intergenerational flow of knowledge. The project focuses on beliefs held by parents regarding the level and relevance of students’ school-taught technical knowledge, as well as students’ assessments of parents’ beliefs. It examines whether parents and students hold systematically biased beliefs; relates these biases to conventional roles prescribed for different configurations of parents and students by gender; and measures the effects of beliefs on intergenerational communication patterns, parents’ acquisition of new technical knowledge, and the empowerment of youth. The research proceeds in four stages. First, a baseline survey will collect household demographics of participants in a school-based technical education program. Second, the PIs will elicit parents’ and students’ beliefs in interviews; and deliver technical information to a random subset of parents and students. Third, the PIs will survey productive inputs allocated to youth for their home production, the acquisition of new technical knowledge among parents as well as communication patterns between students and parents. Finally, the study will track the impact of the information interventions on production patterns after two school years. The results of this research has the potential to increase the pace of innovation and accelerate economic growth, thus improving the living standards of Americans.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.