Can Trust Explain Social Capital Effect on Property Rights and Growth?

The consensus in growth literature has recognized the significant effects of institutions (including social capital and political institutions) towards economic growth. Utilizing the World Value Survey (WVS)’s trust variable that has often been used to represent social capital, and employing panel data technique which hitherto has been very limited in social capital studies, this study shows that WVS’ trust data suffer severe missing observation problem and the panel fixed effect estimation using such data produce highly unrobust results. Future research in social capital therefore needs to expand their measure of social capital beyond the WVS trust indicator. The results also indicate that political institutions effect on growth could possibly occur indirectly via property rights channel.