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Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., Zingales, L. (2010). Civic capital as the missing link. NBER Working paper 15845

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 that help cooperation--which for clarity we label civic capital. We argue that this definition differentiates social capital from human capital and satisfies the properties of the standard notion of capital. We then argue that civic capital can explain why differences in economic performance persist over centuries and discuss how the effect of civic capital can be distinguished empirically from other variables that affect economic performance and its persistence, including institutions and geography.

Authors

Guiso, Luigi

Prof. Guiso joined the Institute in January 2007 from Università di Roma Tor Vergata. He has been visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business. He is a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London and Director of the CEPR Finance Programme. He...

Sapienza, Paola

Paola Sapienza is a professor of finance at the Kellogg School of Management. She also serves as a faculty fellow for the Zell Center for Risk Research, a research affiliate of the Center for Economic Policy Research and a faculty research fellow in the National Bureau of Economic Research's...

Zingales, Luigi

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