This paper offers an overview of the main literature on social capital in the light of Paldam’s (2000) “social capital dream”. Its main contributions can be summed as follows. Firstly, It develops an encompassing definition of social capital built on social interactions, social norms and...

This paper offers an overview of the main literature on civil social capital and its impact on economic growth. Following Durlauf (2002), it points out the econometric issues useful to improve future aggregate empirical studies of social capital.

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...

This paper presents a framework characterized by three definitions of social capital and a hypothesis of conceptual robustness that looks, first of all, at the results of empirical literature on social capital and economic outcomes, such as growth and formal institutions; and secondly, on a...

Il presente lavoro analizza le determinanti della attivita' gratuita per una associazione di volontariato, una associazione non di volontariato, un partito politico ed un sindacato, usando dati ufficiali dell'Indagine Multiscopo sulla Famiglia, Aspetti della vita quotidiana, dell'Istituto...

This paper offers an overview of the main literature on civil social capital and its impact on economic growth. It points out, following Durlauf (2002), the econometric issues useful to improve future aggregate empirical studies on social capital.