Social Capital and Economic Development: Searching for Explanations.

Social capital is a topical concept in economic development. The idea is that differential economic success can be explained in terms of differences in various social variables that are called social capital. My criticism is that this hypothesis, as it stands now, is too vague to help us understand and explain economic development. The variables that are included in social capital are not well defined, and it is not spelled out why and how these variables affect production.