Social Capital: One or Many? Definition and measurement

Three families of social capital concepts are discussed: (fa1) trust, (fa2) ease of cooperation, and (fa3) network. In the language of game theory, social capital is the excess propensity to play cooperative solutions in prisoners’ dilemma games. The three families lead to different definitions, and thus to different measurement methods. Some measures are theory-near, while others are easy-to-use proxies. It is shown that all definitions and measures are related. The »social capital dream« is that all definitions try to catch aspects of the same phenomenon, so that all measures tap the same latent variable. It is discussed if this dream is likely to come true. Written for the Journal of Economic Surveys special issue on political economy ___________________________ *. I am grateful to the participants in the World Bank Social Capital projects, the SCALE group meeting in Amsterdam, and the LOS Centre meeting in Bergen (Norway), and the IMAD conference in PortoroÓ (Slovenia). The article develops ideas in Paldam & Svendsen (2000a). Several of these ideas are due to Gert Tinggaard Svendsen. I am grateful to Ron Wintrobe and Ebbe Yndgaard as well. The address of the author is: Department of Economics, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. Phone: +45 8942-1607. E-mail: and web Martin Paldam Social Capital 2