This chapter surveys research on social capital. We explore the concepts that motivate the social capital literature, efforts to formally model social capital using economic theory, the econometrics of social capital, and empirical studies of the role of social capital in various socioeconomic...

Using data on agricultural traders in Madagascar, this paper shows that social network capital has a large effect on firm productivity. Better connected traders have significantly larger sales and value added than less connected traders after controlling for physical and human inputs as well as...

This chapter reviews the literature identifying the different roles that family and kinship networks play in sharing risk. After a brief overview of efficient risk sharing, we discuss the channels by which households pool risk and the motives for entering in binding informal arrangements....