In this paper, the growth process is not fed by the accumulation of productive assets (physical and/or human capital, knowledge etc.), but by the depletion of environmental or social resources, which induces individuals to increase their labor supply in order to consume more of the market goods...

We model in an endogenous growth set-up the hypotheses that the expansion of market activities weakens social capital formation, and that firms can invest in formal mechanisms of control and enforcement to substitute for social capital (trust, work ethics, honesty). The model shows that the...

We aim at reconciling Putnam's claim that social capital has declined in the U.S. in the last decades with the satisfactory growth performance of the U.S. economy over the same period. This puzzle originates from the fact that - according to most literature - social capital enhances factor...