We explore the role of social capital in the spread of the recent Covid-19 pandemic in independent analyses for Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. Exploiting within-country variation, we show that a one standard deviation increase in social capital leads to...

Previous research shows that collective action to avoid a catastrophic threshold, such as a climate "tipping point", is unaffected by uncertainty about the impact of crossing the threshold but that collective action collapses if the location of the threshold is uncertain. Theory suggests that...

Can digital information and communication technology (ICT) foster mass political mobilization? We use a novel geo-referenced dataset for the entire African continent between 1998 and 2012 on the coverage of mobile phone signal together with georeferenced data from multiple sources on the...

We study a model of social learning in networks where the dynamics of beliefs are driven by conversations of dissonance-minimizing agents. Given their current beliefs, agents make statements, tune them to the statements of their associates, and then revise their beliefs. We characterize the...

Economic growth is propelled in part by the accumulation of different kinds of capital, including social capital in its several guises. This paper considers the interplay between financial crises and various aspects of social capital which, if it is allowed to depreciate, can undermine economic...

Merchant guilds have been portrayed as social networks that generated beneficial social capital by sustaining shared norms, effectively transmitting information, and successfully undertaking collective action. This social capital, it is claimed, benefited society as a whole by enabling rulers to...

This paper analyzes an early modern German economy to test alternative theories about guilds. It finds little evidence to support recent hypotheses arguing that guilds corrected market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation. But it finds that guilds were social networks...

The paper discusses the European Union as a union of primarily small European states, a union whose parallel emphasis on efficiency and fairness, including deep respect for human rights, holds the key to Europe's economic and social advances over the years. The paper shows that adjusting...

In this paper, we study how forced migration impacts the in-group and out-group social capital of Syrian refugees and the host population in Northern Lebanon by administering a novel survey experiment in which we manipulate the salience of the migration experience (for refugees) and the refugee...

We investigate the relationship between social capital and the decision to flee after a fatal road accident. This event is unplanned, and the decision is taken under great emotional distress and time pressure, thus providing a test of whether social capital matters for behaviour in extreme...