This article grapples with the causes of India's microfinance crisis. By contrasting Bangladesh's highly successful Grameen model with the allegedly “universalizable” version of India's SKS Microfinance (which precipitated the crisis), trust or social capital is isolated — not just...

One possible solution to mitigate the negative influences of conflict which has been proposed in the literature is to subject the relevant parties to education. Education can take two forms: increasing an individual's human capital on the one hand, increasing her social capital on the other...

We investigate the relationship between social capital and the decision to flee after a fatal road accident. This event is unplanned, and the decision is taken under great emotional distress and time pressure, thus providing a test of whether social capital matters for behaviour in extreme...

We investigate the relationship between social capital and the decision to flee after a fatal road accident. This event is unplanned, and the decision is taken under great emotional distress and time pressure, thus providing a test of whether social capital matters for behaviour in extreme...

We investigate the relationship between social capital and the decision to flee after a fatal road accident. This event is unplanned, and the decision is taken under great emotional distress and time pressure, thus providing a test of whether social capital matters for behaviour in extreme...

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...

We investigate the effects of civic norms and associational networks on crime rates. Civic norms may attach guilt and shame to criminal behaviour, thus increasing its opportunity cost. Associational networks may increase returns to non-criminal activities and raise detection probabilities, but...

We present new evidence on how generalized trust is formed. Unlike previous studies, we look at the explanatory power of economic institutions, we use newer data, we incorporate more countries, and we use instrumental variables in an attempt to handle the causality problem. A central result is...

I examine the causal relation between social capital and corruption. A simple model illustrates potential mechanisms and yields testable implications, which I estimate in a sample of European countries. The estimated effect of social capital on corruption is found to be robust to the inclusion...

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...