Paper presented at the Conference “From GDP to Well-Being: Economics on the Road to Sustainability”, Ancona, Italy, 3-5 December 2009. <p> Abstract <p> We develop a dynamic model to analyze the sources and the evolution of social participation and social capital in a growing economy characterized...</p></p>

We set up an analytical framework focusing on the problem of interaction over time when economic agents are characterized by various types of distributional social preferences. We develop an evolutionary approach in which individual preferences are endogenous and account for the evolution of...

We study the co-evolution of social participation and social capital accumulation, taking the view that the former contributes to the latter, and both contribute to the enjoyment of relational goods Within this framework, we show that a process of substitution of private for social activities...

The aim of this paper is to trace a map of Italian local social capital endowments. It focuses on the structuraldimension of the concept, as identified with social networks. The analysis is based on a dataset collected by the author including about two hundred indicators of five main social...

Which kind of social capital fosters the diffusion of development-oriented trust? This paper carries out an empirical investigation into the causal relationships connecting four types of social capital (i.e. bonding, bridging, linking, and corporate), and different forms of trust...

We investigate how the patterns of consumption and accumulation, as well as the patterns of time allocation and of social interaction, may be influenced by social pressure, i.e., by the choices of others. We display an evolutionary model involving several generations of interacting...

Il presente lavoro analizza le determinanti della attivita' gratuita per una associazione di volontariato, una associazione non di volontariato, un partito politico ed un sindacato, usando dati ufficiali dell'Indagine Multiscopo sulla Famiglia, Aspetti della vita quotidiana, dell'Istituto...

This paper carries out an assessment of the influence that different kinds of social ties exert on labour precariousness, on the state of health of urban environments and on the economic performance in Italy. Overall, the empirical evidence shows that weak ties connecting members of voluntary...

This paper carries out an empirical assessment of the causal nexus connecting social capital's diverse aspects to the "quality" of economic development in Italy. The analysis accounts for three main social capital dimensions (i.e. bonding, bridging and linking social capital) and measures them...

This paper offers an overview of the main literature on civil social capital and its impact on economic growth. It points out, following Durlauf (2002), the econometric issues useful to improve future aggregate empirical studies on social capital.