Social Capital and Economic Policy

Capital Formation and Economic Policy

THE CURRENT DISCUSSION of capital formation in the United States reflects a general belief that investment has been inadequate during the 1970s and that this shortfall explains a large part of the current economic difficulties. The productivity slowdown, in particular, is often blamed on the failure of investment to keep the capital stock growing as fast as the number of workers. Specific concl...

Social Capital and economic opportunities

Moving on from [Coleman, J.S., 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, London] and [Putnam, R.D., Leonardi, R., Nanetti, R.Y., 1993. Making Democracy Work Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, Chichester], an ever-growing literature claims that repeating trustful interactions in the economy do sediment ...

Social Capital and Innovation Policy

Social Capital and Economic Performance: Analytics

The earlier essay came about at Ismail Serageldin's behest. He felt it would be a worthwhile exercise if I were to connect the ideas developed in Dasgupta (1993) with those in Putnam (1993), to see if the concept of social capital has potency for an understanding of the kinds of institution that are most likely to protect and promote human well-being in poor countries. The earlier essay and the...

Measuring Social Capital and Its Economic Impact

This paper assesses the quality of various micro level measures of social capital. It begins by examining a simple model of social capital accumulation in which households acquire social capital by devoting resources to forming relationships with other households. Through these relationships households acquire access to social resources which raises utility for any level of consumption. Tests o...