This study measures the relative importance of selfishness and social capital motives using resource allocation data collected in hypothetical surveys and non-hypothetical experiments. Social capital motives allow an agent's well-being to be influenced by his sympathetic relationships with...

Social capital is a person or group's sympathy or sense of obligation for another person or group. The objects of sympathetic feelings have social capital. Those holding sympathetic feelings for others provide social capital. Because social capital providers internalize the consequences of their...