Search

Social capital is a topical concept in economic development. The claim is that regional differences in economic success can be explained in terms of differences in various social variables, called social capital. This paper attempts to delineate the mechanisms that link social capital and economic development. I show that social capital can produce two kinds of trust, both of which can reduce transaction costs. It is important to keep these two sources of trust apart, since development policies utilizing social capital have different impacts, depending on the basis of trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconsiders James S. Coleman's concept of social capital. The concept has gained wide use and acceptance in sociology since its first publication, but, Coleman's own writings on the subject remain to date its most extensive analytic treatment. We make two contributions to social capital theory. First, we recast social capital theory to focus on benefits rather than forms. We identify three benefits that forms of social capital may confer: information, influence mid control, and social solidarity. In the context of a focus on benefits, we consider how a specific form of social capital may vary in the degree to which its benefits generalize to different kinds of goals, and how forms that are valuable for some purposes may be a liability for other purposes. Second, we emphasize social capital's origin in aspects of social structure that actors may appropriate to use in their interests. We suggest how changes in the social structure of which social capital is an aspect may affect tile emergence and persistence of forms of social capital and may condition the value of given forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates whether volunteering is imbued with altruistic or strategic reciprocity. Although scholars have intensively studied the motivations and social norms to volunteer, to date there is no agreement why human beings perform activities in which time is freely given up in order to benefit another person, group or organization. We argue that attitudes towards reciprocity and volunteering are related, but that this relationship becomes only visible if we refine the conceptual framework for both concepts. Using data from the Swiss Volunteering Survey 2009, the empirical results of our Bayesian multilevel models show the following: firstly, individuals exhibiting high levels of altruistic reciprocity are more likely to engage in informal volunteering; secondly, we find a negative relationship between altruist reciprocity and the individual likeliness to do voluntary work within non-solidary associations; thirdly, once individuals opted to engage in formal volunteering, we find that strategic reciprocity is clearly related to voluntary engagement in non-solidary associations. Overall, our conceptual foundation provides a more appropriate model to explain the formation of volunteering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The religious economies theory proposes that individuals make religious choices like they make other choices—rationally. This assumption has sparked many theoretical propositions on both the macro- and micro-levels. However, most empirical research has focused on testing the macro-level propositions. This study contributes to addressing this gap by testing the micro-level hypothesis that religious human capital (i.e., religious knowledge and skills) increases religious participation. Previous research typically operationalized religious human capital indirectly through proxy measures, which makes it difficult to separate the effect of religious human capital from the effects of other variables such as religious beliefs, preferences, and religious social capital. As a result, findings from previous studies may support theories other than religious human capital theory. This paper separates different causal effects by using a direct measure of religious human capital (i.e., biblical knowledge), while controlling for other variables deemed important by the literature. Analysis of longitudinal panel studies generally supports the hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main question addressed in this paper is how the great variation in the level of social trust in different countries can be explained. Most empirical research on this question has been based on survey data which has limitations when it comes to capturing the causal mechanisms. Building on theories that point to the importance of trustworthy governmental institutions for creating social trust, two parallel experiments were conducted in two countries where the levels of corruption and social trust are very different. One group of 64 Swedish and one group of 82 Romanian undergraduate students responded to a number of scenarios which describe situations at a police station or a doctor's surgery in a foreign country. In the scenarios, the person tries to receive immediate assistance from the police/doctor at the same time as another person who lives in the 'unknown' country. These encounters varied within groups in terms of (1) whether or not a bribe was used in order to receive immediate assistance, (2) whether the other person or the official took the initiative to request/offer immediate assistance in exchange for the bribe, and (3) outcome in terms of whether immediate assistance was approved or declined as a result of the offer or demand for a bribe. Type of authority (police vs. doctor) was a between-groups factor. Subsequent to each scenario, participants' levels of various aspects of vertical and horizontal trust were measured. As hypothesized, the Romanian sample had reliably lower initial levels of horizontal trust than the Swedish sample. For both samples, however, the results showed the expected effects of bribe, initiator, and outcome on all dependent trust measures. The results supported the hypothesis that trust in authorities influences the perceptions of the trustworthiness of others in general. Even though some of the effects were stronger for one sample than for the other, the influence of vertical trust on social trust was true for both the high- and the low-trusting sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first experimental test of a new view on Social Capital. By contrast with the usual interpretations as a term describing trust, social norms, networks and/or social preferences, we define Social Capital as agents' willingness to share economic rents. To investigate on the influence of economic rents on cooperative behavior, we set up and test experimentally a simple theoretical model in which agents, facing different sets of economic opportunities ('projects'), have to decide whether to take one or more of them. The decision to take only one project implies 'cooperation', as it leaves enough for the others; opting for more than one project implies 'defection', as others are left with fewer opportunities to earn. The various experimental treatments differ in the size of rents (that is, the difference in economic value between one's first and second-best opportunities) available in the economy. For both extremes of rent sizes (the very small and the very large ones), we observe behavior close to our theoretical conjecture (full defection in the case of small-size rents, full cooperation in the case of large-size rents). For intermediate rent-size, however, our evidence reveals higher cooperation levels than predicted. We also discuss our results against the background of the ongoing debate on the measurability of Social Capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every institutional system induces specific problems that have no standardized solutions for the people living in it. In this paper it is argued that people invest in relationships with certain others partly in order to solve these problems. Hence, the personal networks that result provide solutions to system-induced problems and they reflect the institutional environment. Personal networks of people living in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) during communism are examined, and social capital theory is used to explain why communism did not produce social integration. In a communist society like that of the former GDR, weak ties are a liability, not an asset. Therefore, GDR citizens trusted only people whom they knew well. Since people in the former GDR were acutely aware of political control and the damage potential of weak ties, they invested only cautiously in others. They kept their distance from strangers and all others whose trustworthiness was uncertain and discussed politics only with people whom they truly trusted (the 'niche'). Yet the shortages of the command economy forced people to rely on weak informal ties to secure necessary goods and services. Personal networks in East Germany had two specialized parts each kept separate from the other, a division of labor that vanished after the fall of the Wall. Our hypotheses are tested using multilevel models and triad analyses with data collected in 1992 and 1994 from two random samples in Leipzig and Dresden (n = 489). The first measurement focuses on the situation before the upheaval, the other the situation in 1994. Results show that during communism people indeed created 'niches' consisting of dense, small networks of close relations with similar and trustworthy others. Provision networks were maintained that were small, heterogeneous, and consisted of weak and uniplex ties. Furthermore, there was a relational 'gap' between the niche and the provision network. These differences have gradually... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether a family's access to social capital-defined here as perceived access to time and money help in an emergency from kin and friends--depends upon the family's past time and money investments in those kin and friends. It also examines the potential tradeoffs between money and time help from friends and relatives. Data come from parents of children under age 18 who responded to a supplement on time and money assistance included in the 1980 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The results suggest that while parents who invest primarily in friend-based help networks have greater potential access to assistance from friends, there is no significant link between investment in family and access to family-based assistance. Thus, while exchange describes social-capital linkages to friends, it does not describe family-based behaviors. Other findings are that time and money appear to be complements while investments in friends or family are substitutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical models of local social capital predict that communities may find themselves in one of two equilibria: one with a high level of local social capital and low migration or one with a low level of local social capital and high migration. There is empirical literature suggesting that immigrants who join communities high in social capital are more likely to invest in local social capital and that the whole community will then end up in the equilibrium with high local social capital and low migration. However, this literature suffers from the selection of immigrants, which makes the identification challenging. In order to test the causal influence of the initial level of local social capital, we take the setup used in the theoretical models into the laboratory. We treat some communities by increasing the initial level of social capital without affecting the equilibrium outcomes. We find that while most communities end up in one of the two equilibria predicted by the theoretical models, the treated communities are more likely to converge to the equilibrium with a high level of local social capital and low migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adding to the debate about the “broken windows” thesis we discuss an explanation of minor norm violation based on the assumption that individuals infer expected sanctioning probabilities from contextual cues. We modify the classical framework of rational crime by signals of disorder, local social control, and their interaction. Testing our implications we present results from three field experiments showing that violations of norms, which prevent physical as well as social disorder, foster further violations of the same and of different norms. Varying the net gains from deviance it shows that disorder effects are limited to low-cost situations. Moreover, we provide suggestive evidence that disorder effects are significantly stronger in neighborhoods with high social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a growing interest in the literature on trust and social capital in the analysis of the role of the State in the creation and destruction of trust. According to some authors, the intervention of the State crowds out trust instead of fostering it. In this article, the author shows that the intervention of the State as a third-party enforcer of agreements does not crowd out expectations of trust, but it does not create trust either. However, it is further shown that the absence or inefficacy of the State does destroy trust. This last idea is illustrated with a classical case in the social capital literature: Southern Italy in the modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the effect of legitimacy in a population on returns to social capital. Also, the article analyzes the network structure of social capital and its ineffectiveness on women of entrepreneurial networks linked to early promotion for senior men. The author begins with the network structure of social capital, explaining the information and control benefits of structural holes. The holes in a network are entrepreneurial opportunities to add value, and persons rich in such opportunities are expected to be more successful than their peers. The author studied outsiders to understand how legitimacy affects returns to social capital. In the interpersonal politics of competition, legitimate members of the population, mishpokhe, are twice advantaged. Investors are more likely to believe they understand the motives and probable actions of someone like themselves, which means they feel more confident in predicting the future behavior of mishpokhe. Second, it is easier for investors to trust mishpokhe because his or her reputation will be tarnished if investors are treated poorly. The key for outsiders breaking into the game is to borrow social capital rather than build it.

The article discusses solidarity between public sector organisations. Social cohesion is one of the classical problems of sociology. Governments establish public sector organizations that have a primary task of stimulating social cohesion. Examples are governmental bureaus that match jobs and people looking for jobs, social services organizations for people on welfare, apprentice organizations to realize social integration of young people and school dropouts within society, and organizations for urban and social renewal. Organizations established to integrate members from ethnic minorities provide a further set of examples. Spending money on public sector organizations that implement social policies is certainly believed to help in realizing solidarity and social cohesion. An 'asymmetric society' is established explicitly in order to solve society's social cohesion problems. A prominent question must then be what safeguards exist to ensure that the activities of the resulting public sector organizations are geared to one another.