We study a cross-section of 54 European regions in the period 1950-1998.The central question is whether social capital, in the form of generalized trust and associational activity, is related to regional differences in economic growth. Based on extensive robustness tests, we present evidence...

This paper analyzes the relations between social capital, institutions and trust.These concepts are full of ambiguity and confusion.This paper attempts to dissolve some of the confusion, by distinguishing trust and control, and analyzing institutional and relational conditions of trust.It...

We measure the contribution of fiscal decentralization to trust in government. Using repeated cross-country survey data of individuals on several measures of trust in govern- ment over the 1994-2007 period, we estimate an ordered response model of the government trust and fiscal decentralization...

We examine the effect of trust on financial investment and contracting decisions in a micro-economic environment where trust is exogenous. Using hand-collected data on European venture capital, we show that the Eurobarometer measure of trust among nations significantly affects investment...

In this paper we develop a formal model of economic growth and two types of social capital. Following extant literature, we model social capital as participation in two types of social networks: first, closed networks of family and friends, and, second, open networks that bridge different...

We propose a method to forecast the winner of a tennis match, not only at the beginning of the match, but also (and in particular) during the match.The method is based on a fast and exible computer program TENNISPROB, and on a statistical analysis of a large data set from Wimbledon, both at...

R&D is good for economic growth.There is now compelling evidence that R&D is in particular good for local economic growth, since knowledge spillovers tend to be bounded by distance.But how local is local?This paper studies the role of proximity in innovation in the Netherlands, a small...

Recently a variety of link-based stability concepts have emerged in the literature on game theoretic models of social network formation.We investigate two basic formation properties that establish equivalence between some well known types of stable networks and their natural extensions.These...