The European Commission has proposed a new legal form for European companies and for the private European society, or “Societas Privata Europaea” (SPE). The advantages of this new legal form are a greater flexibility and lower costs for small and medium enterprises who wish to pursue...

Koncepcja kapita³u spo³ecznego staje siê coraz bardziej popularna. Bartkowski [2007, s 59-60] wskazuje na bardzo dynamiczny wzrost liczby publikacji dotycz±cych tej tematyki wci±gu ostatnich 20 lat. Pomimo tego, pojêcie kapita³u spo³ecznego nie doczeka³o siê jak dot±djednej definicji....

This paper studies the effects of social capital on access to bank financing. Based on a Chinese nationwide survey our analysis suggests that entrepreneurs who spend more time on social activities are more likely to obtain a loan from commercial banks. In addition, we find that membership of...

We study how the closeness of electoral race affect the number of invalid ballots under the traditional paper-ballot voting technology. Using a large dataset from the Italian parliamentary elections in 1994-2001, we find a strong positive correlation between the closeness of electoral race and...

This paper investigates how scientists decide whether to share information with their colleagues or not. Detailed data on the decisions of 1,694 bio-scientists allow to detect similarities and differences between academia-based and industry-based scientists. Arguments from social capital theory...

External knowledge acquisition represents a precondition for firms’ competitive advantage. However, young firms find it particularly difficult to gain access to external sources of knowledge: young firms suffer from a liability of newness by exhibiting significantly lower propensities to...

Open source software is a public good voluntarily provided by a community of autonomous developers. His production model refers to new developments in the economic theory of governance. We suggest that social capital governs the benevolent community where monetary incentives are absent. However,...