This chapter reviews the recent debate about the role of social capital in economics. We argue that all the difficulties this concept has encountered in economics are due to a vague and excessively broad definition. For this reason, we restrict social capital to the set of values and beliefs...

This paper develops an empirically-relevant framework (a) to examine whether or not the African business environment hinders or promotes the knowledge economy (KE), (b) to determine how the KE which emerges from such an environment affects economic growth, and (c) how growth in turn relates to...

Africa's overall knowledge index fell between 2000 and 2009. South Korea's economic miracle is largely due to a knowledge-based development strategy that holds valuable lessons for African countries in their current pursuit towards knowledge economies. Using updated data (1996-2010), this paper...

This paper develops a framework (a) to examine whether or not the African business e nvironment hinders or promotes the knowledge economy (KE), (b) to determine how the KE affects econom ic performance, and (c) how economic performance relates to the inequality-adjusted human socioeconomic...

This paper analyzes the relations between social capital, institutions and trust. These concepts are full of ambiguity and confusion. This paper attempts to dissolve some of the confusion, by distinguishing trust and control, and analyzing institutional and relational conditions of trust. It...

This paper presents a neoclassical-growth model in which long-run growth is driven by the continuous specialization of capital. The specialization of capital is the allocation of capital into sets of specialized capital and the coordination required for different individuals to use the same set...

This paper proposes somatic capital as a hitherto neglected variable in the discussion of factors impacting the timing of the Neolithic transition. It develops an evolutionary growth theory that builds on the trade-off between the quantity and the quality of offspring. The theory suggests that...