This paper studies the accumulation of social capital in Italy in the light of Durlauf’s (2002) econometric approach. Social interactions are taken as a robust definition of social capital. The following empirical proxies are used: active and passive participation in various kinds of organisations and frequency of contact with friends. In order to merge information from different datasets, such as ISTAT’s (Italian Central Statistical Office) Multiscopo survey and Bank of Italy’s SHIW (Household Surveys of Income and Wealth), a statistical matching methodology is implemented to build pseudo panel data. The main results can be summed up as follows. Firstly, unlike in previous works for the US (Alesina and La Ferrara, 1999; Costa and Khan, 2001), income inequality is found not to matter for the accumulation of social capital. Secondly, participation turns out to be a “normal good”, like in Alesina and La Ferrara (1999), as active and passive participation is positively related to median regional household income. Finally, some potential instrumental variables correlated with social capital accumulation and uncorrelated with household income are found, possibly providing means to deal with Durlauf’s econometric identification problem.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
796.
Find related papers by JEL classification: Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks Economic Anthropology
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Steven N. Durlauf & Marcel Fafchamps, 2004.
"Social Capital,"
NBER Working Papers
10485, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Alesina, Alberto & La Ferrara, Eliana, 2002.
"Who trusts others?,"
Journal of Public Economics,
Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 207-234, August.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)