Numerous contributions in the last decades are based on similar inspiratory principles, which, at least if considered altogether, are highly innovative with respect to the existing tradition in economics. This paper is a perspective and speculative guess aiming at identifying the gist of this...

During the recent global recession both the export-oriented northern Italian regions and those in the far less open South experienced a sharp decline in economic activity. One of the possible explanations is the existence of strong domestic linkages propagating foreign demand shocks from North...

Despite the fact that it provides a potentially useful analytical tool, allowing for the joint modeling of dynamic interdependencies within a group of connected areas, until lately the VAR approach had received little attention in regional science and spatial economic analysis. This paper aims...

The current unsustainable growth of the world economy is largely a consequence of the crisis of social capital experienced by much of the world's population. Declining social capital leads the economies to excessive growth, because people seek economic affluence as compensation for the emotional...

The volume collects the essays presented at the conference "Social capital, economics and political economy" held in Rome on 27 June 2014. The first session analyzes definition and measurement issues about social capital. The second and third sessions examine its determinants and economic...

Social capital is a key factor affecting the functioning of financial markets (Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales, 2004). However, the estimation of the effect of social capital on credit markets is notoriously difficult. In this paper we exploit the recent Lehman Brothers crisis and a rich dataset to...

In the last two decades the socio-economic literature has highlighted the importance of social capital (an ample set of social relations and cultural attitudes) for economic growth and the wellbeing of citizens. The literature broadly suggests a negative correlation between social capital and...

What does predict the evolution over time of subjective well-being? We answer this question correlating cross country time series of subjective well-being with the time series of social capital and/or GDP. First, we adopt a bivariate methodology similar to the one used used by Stevenson and...

We investigate the relationship between social participation and the hours worked in the market. Social participation is the component of social capital that measures individuals’ engament in groups, associations and non-governmental organizations. We provide a model of consumer choice where...