This paper critically examines the way in which empirical evidence is developed in support of a role for social capital in socioeconomic outcomes. Three leading studies of social capital are reviewed and in each case argued to suffer from various identification problems. A general set of conditions under which social capital effects may be identified in linear models is given. Careful attention...

Despite the rampant adoption of Enterprise 2.0, there is lack of empirical evidence of how Enterprise 2.0 is aptly supporting the business objectives. Social capital theory will be used as a theoretical lens to understand the impact and implications of individual use of Enterprise 2.0. To ascertain the impact from the use of Enterprise 2.0 on the various dimensions of social capital, a single i...

Potential bribe-payers often face a collective action problem: they would all be better off if they could enforce an agreement not to pay bribes. This paper uses a linkedgames model to show how social capital, viewed as trust generated through repeated interactions in other games, can help them to overcome this collective action problem and enforce agreements (or norms) against bribery. We also...

Earlier work has found that social capital reduces traffic fatality risk (Nagler 2013a, Nagler 2013b). Recognizing that rural areas suffer from high traffic fatality levels despite a perceived high density of communal ties, we explore here whether social capital provides the same protection against traffic risks on rural roads as on urban roads, and what factors might explain differential effec...

The goal of this paper is describe and analyze the relationship between ability tracking and student social capital, in the context of poor students in developing countries. Drawing on the results from a longitudinal study among 1,436 poor students across 132 schools in rural China, we find a significant lack of interpersonal trust and confidence in public institutions among poor rural young ad...

This paper develops the concept of institutional social capital and discusses its importance in the labor market. Institutional social capital is constituted by the resources inherent in an organization (such as a school) and thereby available to members of that organization. This is contrasted with the social capital available to individuals through their own personal networks. In the labor ma...

This paper investigates the effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (hereafter, SOX) on the compensation structure and the risk-taking incentives of CEOs as revealed by their research and development expenses and capital expenditures. We hypothesize that firms will respond to the additional liability imposed by SOX on corporate executives by altering the mix of incentive compensation to fixed salary a...

We use forward-looking and exogenous measures of output price uncertainty to examine the effect of price uncertainty on firm-level capital investment, risk management, and debt issuance. The effects of uncertainty vary significantly by firm size. When faced with high price uncertainty, large firms increase their hedging intensity but do not lower capital investment or debt issuance. In contrast...

Handling Editor: Shelly Dionne Network scholars argue that one responsibility of leaders is to help their followers develop social capital.We suggest that oneway leaders do this is by encouraging followers to engage in networking behavior. However, we argue that such encouragement is more effective when leaders are seen as less transformational, because followers are then less able to benefit f...

Increased concern for the environment has increased the number of investment opportunities in mutual funds specialized in promoting responsible environmental attitudes. This paper examines the performance and risk sensitivities of US green mutual funds vis-à-vis their conventional peers. We also analyze and compare this performance relative to other Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) mutual f...