The effects of property rights on investment are typically hypothesized to occur through a security-induced investment demand and a collateral-based credit supply. Using a two period model, this paper shows that for farms that are constrained in their access to liquidity, the investment demand...

The effects of property rights on investment are typically hypothesized to occur through a security-induced investment demand and a collateral-based credit supply. Using a two period model, this paper shows that for farms that are constrained in their access to liquidity, the investment demand...

Property rights reform is typically hypothesized to boost investment through investment demand and credit supply effects. Yet when the credit supply effect is muted, property rights reform would be expected to induce liquidity-constrained farms to reduce investment in movable capital even as...

Using a longitudinal survey of South African households over the 1993-2004 period, this paper evaluates changes in income distribution since the end of apartheid. Inequality amongst these households has markedly increased this period as initially better off households consistently improved their...

Social capital has been identified as an important avenue of upward mobility for poorer people. However, recent theoretical work suggests that in highly polarized societies, the accumulation of social capital is likely to be fragmented and ineffective for people at the bottom of the economic...

In economics, where the long resistance to reflecting on the effects of social interaction on economic behaviour is slowly waning, the concept of social capital may turn out to be a useful analytical tool. However, initial interest in social capital has produced a large variety of definitions,...

This paper measures the social capital of trust and trustworthiness in South Africa using an experimental protocol designed to distinguish these norms from altruism. Experimental participants played multiple roles, making it impossible to construct theoretically-grounded norm measures based on...