In his critical reply on my article, Uslaner points to several issues, amongst others the lack of observations in the principal components analysis, and the fundamental relationship between micro and macro trust on the one hand and institutions on the other hand. Of these two I hold the second...

Prior studies have shown that institutional hazards in the form of formal governance deficiencies and informal cultural distance are both negatively related to the amount of foreign multinational activity in countries. We argue that the strength of these negative relationships varies...

This paper takes issue with the trend to attribute differences in economic growth rates to differences in interpersonal trust. I discuss the World Values Survey (WVS) measure that is used to operationalise trust at the macro level. I hypothesise that there is a mismatch between the theoretical...

This paper analyses the robustness of results on the relationship between growth and trust previously derived by Knack and Keefer (1997) and Zak and Knack (2001) along several dimensions, acknowledging the complexity of the concept of robustness. Our results show that the Knack and Keefer...

Economists increasingly pay attention to social capital as an important determinant of macroeconomic growth performance. At the same time, there is discussion regarding the robustness of the results of empirical growth studies. In a seminal paper, Knack and Keefer (1997) assess the effect of...

This paper studies the intangible costs of international trade by extending the basic gravity equation with measures of cultural and institutional distance, and institutional quality. Analyzing a sample of bilateral trade flows between 92 countries in 1999, we find that institutional distance...

Beugelsdijk S. and Van Schaik T. (2005) Differences in social capital between 54 Western European regions, Regional Studies 39 , 1053-1064. Based on the extant literature, a newly developed index measuring social capital at the regional level in Europe is presented. It is shown that there are...

Beugelsdijk S., Van Schaik T. and Arts W. (2006) Toward a unified Europe? Explaining regional differences in value patterns by economic development, cultural heritage and historical shocks, Regional Studies 40, 317-327. The concept of the 'Europe of the regions' has given rise to the question of...

This paper develops indicators for entrepreneurial culture and investigates their effect on the rate of nascent entrepreneurship. We choose three measures from the World Value Survey. These include two desired job characteristics, i.e. the opportunity to use initiative and the possibility to...