We use a unique regulatory event that occurred in Queensland, Australia, from 2007- 2012, to examine the predictive power of landowner relationship networks and lobbying behaviour on successfully gaining value-enhancing rezoning. A State authority, the Urban Land Development Authority (ULDA),...

One definition of social capital is the "networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively". This definition of social capital highlights two key features. First, it refers to connections between people, shifting our...

We study the self-employed decision and its relation to human and social capital. Human capital is necessary to acquire skills. Social capital dampens the effects of uncertainty about future income. Our data set consists of 1339 respondents from the same age group, who were interviewed three...

Both migrant entrepreneurship and social capital are topics which have attracted a great deal of attention. However, relatively little econometric analysis has been done on their interrelationship. In this paper we first consider the relationship between social capital and the prevalence of...

This paper employs a unique dataset on articles, authors and editors of the top general interest journals in economics to investigate the role of social connections in the publication process. Ties between editors and authors are identified based on their academic histories. Results show that an...

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether return migrants are more likely to become entrepreneurs than non-migrants. We develop a theoretical search model that puts forward the trade off faced by returnees since overseas migration provides an opportunity for human and physical capital...

This paper studies the event history of business foundation. Three theoretical concepts of human, financial and social capital are linked to investigate variations over time of people's decision processes to become self-employed. Data from a cohort of Dutch inhabitants born in 1939/1940 who have...

In Europe differences among countries in the overall change in happiness since the early 1980s have been due chiefly to the generosity of welfare state programs - increasing happiness going with increasing generosity and declining happiness with declining generosity. This is the principal...