This study analyses the relationship between social capital accumulation and the amount of rural credit market contracts of the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The most important definitions of social capital found on literature and the main ways of creation and measure this variable were reported....

The transition to market economy has represented both for Romania and other Central and Eastern European countries an emphasis on economic and social inequalities. The authors consider it is necessary to identify a path pass from chaotic inequalities to a state of economic and social cohesion...

Does an individual's housing situation affect community social capital and influence regional development through this channel? A body of literature which followed the seminal work of DiPasquale and Glaeser suggests that homeownership is positively related to social capital formation due to both...

The aim of the study is to analyze the representative variables of the stock of social capital available in the São Paulo State's counties, Brazil, according to the theory and methodology proposed by Robert Putnam. It describes some representative elements of social capital in the counties of...

The remarkable influx of Chinese migrant entrepreneurs in West Africa has been met with growing resistance from established African entrepreneurs. Whether the Chinese have a competitive edge over Africans because of distinctive sociocultural traits or whether the Chineseʹs supposed...

In many contexts we may be interested in understanding whether direct connections between agents, such as declared friendships in a classroom or family links in a rural village, affect their outcomes. In this paper we review the literature studying econometric methods for the analysis of social...

This paper investigates opinion dynamics and social influence in directed communication networks. We study the theoretical properties of a boundedly rational model of opinion formation in which individuals aggregate the information they receive from their neighbors by using weights that are a...

This paper reflects on a "cultural industry model" with important potential for local development, which is the network of independent cultural producers of Brazilian slums. The landscape of favelas is unique: plagued by poverty and crime, they have come to encapsulate the worst aspects of...

The main goal of this paper is to identify relationships between value orientations, beliefs and economic behavior of agents, on one side, and differences between levels of economic development, on the other. Empirical analysis is based on a sample of Portuguese municipalities and correspondent...

Despite a long-standing controversy about aid-effectiveness in general and the impact of aid-dependency on governance in particular, little is known on the effect of donors policies on civic agency for democratization in aid dependent autocratic regimes. In this study it is argued that the...