IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/soceco/v37y2008i4p1515-1538.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social capital renewal and the academic performance of international students in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Neri, Frank
  • Ville, Simon

Abstract

Many believe that social capital fosters the accumulation of human capital. Yet international university students arrive in their host country generally denuded of social capital and confronted by unfamiliar cultural and educational institutions. This study investigates how, and to what extent, international students renew their social networks, and whether such investments are positively associated with academic performance. We adopt a social capital framework and conduct a survey of international students at a typical Australian university in order to categorise and measure investments in social capital renewal, and test a multivariate model of academic performance that includes social capital variables, amongst others, as regressors. Our survey results reveal a high degree of variability in social capital investment across students and, amongst the more active, a tendency to build close networks in the main with students from their own country of origin. Our empirical results suggest that such investments are not associated with improved academic performance but are associated with increased well being.

Suggested Citation

  • Neri, Frank & Ville, Simon, 2008. "Social capital renewal and the academic performance of international students in Australia," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1515-1538, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:37:y:2008:i:4:p:1515-1538
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W5H-4NP3P45-1/1/4fe8fd62b2c2d2369735cc02dc0c5640
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-1288.
    2. Beugelsdijk, Sjoerd & van Schaik, Ton, 2005. "Social capital and growth in European regions: an empirical test," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 301-324, June.
    3. Terrence Casey & Kevin Christ, 2005. "Social Capital and Economic Performance in the American States," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 86(4), pages 826-845, December.
    4. DARREN McKAY & DONALD E. LEWIS, 1995. "Domestic Economic Impact Of Exporting Education: A Case Study Of The University Of Wollongong," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 14(1), pages 28-39, March.
    5. Suet‐ling Pong & Lingxin Hao & Erica Gardner, 2005. "The Roles of Parenting Styles and Social Capital in the School Performance of Immigrant Asian and Hispanic Adolescents," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 86(4), pages 928-950, December.
    6. Niclas Berggren & Henrik Jordahl, 2006. "Free to Trust: Economic Freedom and Social Capital," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 141-169, May.
    7. Joel Sobel, 2002. "Can We Trust Social Capital?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(1), pages 139-154, March.
    8. Partha Dasgupta, 2005. "Economics of Social Capital," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 81(s1), pages 2-21, August.
    9. Beaulieua, Lionel J. & Israel, Glenn D. & Hartless, Glen & Dyk, Patricia, 2001. "For whom does the school bell toll?: Multi-contextual presence of social capital and student educational achievement," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 121-127, March.
    10. R. Quentin Grafton & Stephen Knowles & P. Dorian Owen, 2004. "Total Factor Productivity, Per Capita Income and Social Divergence," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 80(250), pages 302-313, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marina Murat, 2014. "Soft, hard or smart power? International students and investments abroad," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 107, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    2. Marina Murat, 2013. "Education ties and investments abroad. Empirical evidence from the US and UK," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 091, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    3. repec:mod:depeco:0014 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Rodrigo Martín-Rojas & Virginia Fernández-Pérez & Encarnación García-Sánchez, 2017. "Encouraging organizational performance through the influence of technological distinctive competencies on components of corporate entrepreneurship," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 397-426, June.
    5. Marina Murat, 2014. "Soft, hard or smart power? International students and investments abroad," Department of Economics 0043, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    6. Rodrigo Martín-Rojas & Virginia Fernández-Pérez & Encarnación García-Sánchez, 0. "Encouraging organizational performance through the influence of technological distinctive competencies on components of corporate entrepreneurship," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-30.
    7. Ivanova Polina, 2020. "Civil Society Groups Involved with International Students in Japan: Typology and Social Capital Generation," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 11(3), pages 1-18, October.
    8. Potts, Danielle & Martensen, Malte, 2020. "Skilled migration: Bridging the conceptual gap between friendship, social capital, and employability," IU Discussion Papers - Human Resources 4/2020, IU International University of Applied Sciences.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yamamura, Eiji, 2008. "The role of social capital in homogeneous society: Review of recent researches in Japan," MPRA Paper 11385, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Lyndon Murphy & Robert Huggins & Piers Thompson, 2016. "Social capital and innovation: A comparative analysis of regional policies," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 34(6), pages 1025-1057, September.
    3. Soumyananda Dinda, 2014. "Inclusive growth through creation of human and social capital," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 41(10), pages 878-895, October.
    4. Anneli Kaasa, 2018. "Intangible factors and productivity: Evidence from Europe at the regional level," Business and Economic Horizons (BEH), Prague Development Center, vol. 14(2), pages 300-325, April.
    5. Lízia Figueiredo, 2011. "Social capital literature and Durlauf´s criticism," Textos para Discussão Cedeplar-UFMG td430, Cedeplar, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
    6. Beugelsdijk, S. & Smulders, J.A., 2009. "Bonding and Bridging Social Capital and Economic Growth," Discussion Paper 2009-27, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    7. Yamamura, Eiji, 2011. "The role of social trust in reducing long-term truancy and forming human capital in Japan," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 380-389, April.
    8. Antonio C. David & Carmen A. Li, 2010. "Exploring the links between HIV|AIDS, social capital and development," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(7), pages 941-961.
    9. Boenisch, Peter & Schneider, Lutz, 2013. "The social capital legacy of communism-results from the Berlin Wall experiment," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 391-411.
    10. Dufhues, Thomas & Buchenrieder, Gertrud & Fischer, Isabel, 2006. "Social capital and rural development: literature review and current state of the art [Sozialkapital und ländliche Entwicklung: Literaturüberblick und gegenwärtiger Stand der Forschung]," IAMO Discussion Papers 96, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).
    11. Hideki Toya & Mark Skidmore, 2014. "Do Natural Disasters Enhance Societal Trust?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(2), pages 255-279, May.
    12. Edward L. Glaeser & David I. Laibson & José A. Scheinkman & Christine L. Soutter, 2000. "Measuring Trust," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 811-846.
      • Glaeser, Edward Ludwig & Laibson, David I. & Scheinkman, Jose A. & Soutter, Christine L., 2000. "Measuring Trust," Scholarly Articles 4481497, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    13. Tu, Qin & Bulte, Erwin, 2010. "Trust, Market Participation and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from Rural China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 1179-1190, August.
    14. Bouma, Jetske & Bulte, Erwin & van Soest, Daan, 2008. "Trust and cooperation: Social capital and community resource management," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 155-166, September.
    15. David B. Audretsch & Nikolaus Seitz & Katherine Margaret Rouch, 2018. "Tolerance and innovation: the role of institutional and social trust," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 8(1), pages 71-92, March.
    16. Stephen Knowles, 2006. "Is Social Capital Part of the Institutions Continuum and is it a Deep Determinant of Development?," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-25, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. Akcomak, Semih, 2009. "Bridges in social capital: A review of the definitions and the social capital of social capital researchers," MERIT Working Papers 2009-002, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    18. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2008. "Social capital in the creation of human capital and economic growth: A productive consumption approach," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 2020-2033, October.
    19. Soares, Helena & Sequeira, Tiago Neves & Marques, Pedro Macias & Gomes, Orlando & Ferreira-Lopes, Alexandra, 2018. "Social infrastructure and the preservation of physical capital: Equilibria and transitional dynamics," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 321(C), pages 614-632.
    20. Thompson, Maria, 2018. "Social capital, innovation and economic growth," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 46-52.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:37:y:2008:i:4:p:1515-1538. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620175 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.