According to different types of studies conducted in recent years, not natural but social factors will constitute a major barrier in the process of achieving sustainable development. The barrier will be quickly noticed in the countries and regions of low social capital. The purpose of this...

Putnam (1995)'s seminal work was one of the first to describe the decline of social capital in the US after the 1960s, a period that saw a large increase in the flow of immigrants into the US. Using the Volunteer Supplement of the September Sample of the Current Population Survey (CPS) between...

Some scholars have argued that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution did not have a common set of views on economics, or that the Constitution, except perhaps in isolated clauses, does not reflect any specific economic views. The principal Framers did, in fact, share a basic set of economic...

A prominent explanation for why trade is not free is politicians' desire to protect some of their constituents at the expense of others. In this paper we develop a methodology that can be used to reveal the welfare weights that a nation's import tariffs implicitly place on different groups of...

Contrary to claims by Gul and Pesendorfer (2008), I show that standard economics makes use of non-choice evidence in a meaningful way. This is because standard economics solely grounded in the theory of choice is "incomplete". That is, it has content that can not be revealed with any general...

This paper examines the effect of exposure to a culture of easier divorce as a minor on generalized trust using the General Social Survey from 1973-2010. The easier divorce culture is defined as the introduction of no-fault including unilateral divorce reforms across the US.According to the...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of social capital in reducing the negative externalities associated with stress, as well as the physical and psychological strain indicators among police officers. Despite the fact that there is a large multidisciplinary literature on stress or on social...

This paper studies social-tie formation when individuals care about the geographical location of other individuals. In our model, the intensity of social interactions can be chosen at the same time as friends. We characterize the equilibrium in terms of both social interactions and social...

This paper explores the determinants of social trust, as measured by perceived honesty, in 48 US states across three periods. The results show support for the detrimental effects of income inequality but no or little support for a set of popular alternative theories. The trust decline in recent...

In this study, we show that an inflow of immigrants reduces volunteering, a proxy of social capital investment, in receiving communities. Since the 1960s, the US has seen a large decrease in social capital as well as a considerable inflow of immigrants. This increased heterogeneity in US cities...