Social capital is defined as mutual trust. It is related to production by a key hypothesis: social capital determines how easily people work together. An easy-to-use proxy (Putnam's Instrument) is the density of voluntary organizations. Social capital might be a new production factor which must...

This chapter reviews the theory of the voluntary public and private redistribution of wealth elaborated by economic analysis in the last forty years or so. The central object of the theory is altruistic gift-giving, construed as benevolent voluntary redistribution of income or wealth. The theory...

This paper analyses lawyer's choices of law in international sales contracts. It identifies key reasons for opting in or out of the CISG across different jurisdictions. The paper then examines aspects of this choice from economic and psychological perspectives: from the ability to externalize...

Why do lawyers in some jurisdictions continue to ‘automatically’ exclude the 1980 UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) in their choices of law for international sales contracts? Why do lawyers in other jurisdictions approach the decision very differently? Why...

This paper builds a bridge between certain of the most basic principles of economics and those of evolutionary biology. It begins by extending Ronald Coase’s “The Nature of the Firm” to an investigation of how, as their environment evolves, species achieve adaptive efficiency by...

Social capital is often represented by generalized trust - the degree to which one trusts "most (unknown) people". It is assumed to be enhanced by diverse group interactions. In the social capital literature, it is opposed by particularized trust, which represents our mutual confidence in...

Aiming to explain the European divide with respect to social and political values, scholars in the past have relied on a simplified four- (or even two-) dimensional regime model which tranches the continent according to the social capacities of its inhabitants. This "cartography" of "Social...

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...

Since 1972 the General Social Survey (GSS) has asked a representative sample of US adults "… [are] you…very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?" Overall, the population is reasonably happy even after a mild recent decline. I focus on differences along standard socio demographic...

Although social capital has been considered of the utmost importance for development and poverty alleviation by governments and NGOs, it remains a complex and elusive concept. Different dimensions of social capital form part of the puzzle: cooperation is an individual other-regarding preference;...