Moralische Gefühle als Grundlage einer wohlstandschaffendenWettbewerbsordnung:Ein neuer Ansatz zur Erforschung von Sozialkapitalund seine Anwendung auf China

In his comprehensive critique of current economic approaches to social capital, Durlauf(2002) recommends a stronger reliance on methods of experimental economics and socialpsychology. This paper surveys different notions of social capital and submits an alternativeconceptual approach based on the economics of identity (Akerlof and Kranton 2000), which issupplemented by recent interdisciplinary insights into the role of emotions in coordinatinghuman interactions. I claim that this perspective goes back to Adam Smith and his “Theory ofMoral Sentiments“. A new definition of social capital is proposed that puts “shared framedemotions“ into the central place. I apply this new approach on China, especially with referenceto the notion of guanxi (networks).