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 study investigates the relationship between religiously-induced internalized values of individuals and their specific attitudes regarding the acceptance of corruption. The dataset on which our study is based was collected by the World Values Survey from 141,326 individuals in 78 countries...

Die Ökonomik der Kriminalität und die darauf aufbauende Ökonomik der Sicherheit konzentrieren sich vorwiegend auf Strafen als Mittel der Politik. Dies ist aus verschiedenen Gründen unklug. Zum einen gibt es eine Reihe von Bedingungen, unter denen Bestrafung nicht wirkt oder die Zahl der...

Die Ökonomik der Kriminalität und die darauf aufbauende Ökonomik der Sicherheit konzentrieren sich vorwiegend auf Strafen als Mittel der Politik. Dies ist aus verschiedenen Gründen unklug. Zum einen gibt es eine Reihe von Bedingungen, unter denen Bestrafung nicht wirkt oder die Zahl der...

The economics of crime concentrates on policies in the form of punishments. To adopt such a policy is unwise for several reasons. On the one hand, there are important instances in which punishment is unable to reduce crime or may even increase it. On the other hand, there are feasible...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the intensity of the recent global economic crisis and the current economic position of EU countries on the one hand and relative poverty and/or inequality on the other. Using data from the 27 EU member states we find a link between economic...

We provide a concise introduction to a household-panel data infrastructure that provides the international research community with longitudinal data of private households in Germany since 1984: the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). We demonstrate the comparative strength of the SOEP data in...

This paper is the first to analyze the impact of family background on permanent earnings based on sibling correlations in Germany and to provide a cross-country comparison of Germany, Denmark, and USA. The main findings are that family and community background has a stronger influence on...