Purpose - Social capital and its core components of social trust and associational activity are widely acknowledged as a core feature of strong and active civil societies that promote effective democratic governance and economic prosperity. Within this context the present study sets out to...

This paper investigates the relation between social capital and crime. The analysis contributes to explaining why crime is so heterogeneous across space. By employing current and historical data for Dutch municipalities and by providing novel indicators to measure social capital, we find a link...

This paper provides an introduction to the concept of social capital, and carries out a critical review of the empirical literature on social capital and economic development. The survey points out six main weaknesses affecting the empirics of social capital. Identified weaknesses are then used...

I establish a positive relationship between family ties and civic virtues, as captured by disapproval of tax and benefit cheating, corruption, and a range of other dimensions of exploiting others for personal gain. I find that family ties are a complement to social capital, using within country...

This paper addresses two hot topics of the contemporary debate, social capital and economic growth. Our theoretical analysis sheds light on decisive but so far neglected issues: how does social capital accumulate over time? Which is the relationship between social capital, technical progress and...

I establish a positive relationship between family ties and civic virtues, as captured by disapproval of tax and benefit cheating, corruption, and a range of other dimensions of exploiting others for personal gain. I find that family ties are a complement to social capital, using within country...

This paper studies whether civic capital acts an effective restraint against opportunistic behavior in transactions, looking at the degree of outsourcing to external suppliers of service provision in Italian firms. Our results show that, on average, firms tend to outsource more services where...

A range of evidence exists demonstrating that social capital is associated with a number of important economic outcomes such as economic growth, trade and crime. A recent literature goes further to illustrate how historical events and variation can lead to the development of differing and...

This article establishes that there are significant social influences on the decisions made by individuals about whether to trust others. These social interactions effects may arise from exogenous-environmental characteristics or from endogenous effects that make people conform to the particular...

The purpose of the current paper is to investigate the possible relationship between fiscal discipline and social capital in EU member states during the last economic crisis and recovery, along with the assessment of the initial welfare effects of fiscal stimulus measures. Preliminary results...