Understanding Determinants of Social Capital: Cooperation and Informal Sanctions in a Cross-Societal Perspective

Two economically important elements of social capital are trust and disciplining free-riders. Most of current research focuses on trust. We argue that research should shift focus toward informal sanctions. We present two experimental studies from Switzerland, Byelorussia and Russia to support this argument. Our first study elicits trust and cooperative preferences in a public goods game and finds almost no differences. Our second study is a public good experiment with and without punishment. Here we detect no differences in the game without punishment and strong differences in the presence of punishment. Our results contribute to the current social capital debate. (100 words)