Inside Group Lending, Social Cohesion (and/or Social Capital) is a positive factor for repayment rates. But recent research on Social Cohesion and repayment has found empirical evidence that states this relation is not positive. The present article intends to provide a critical review of such...

Trust and participation in social networks are inherently interrelated. We make use of India's demonetization policy, an unexpected and unforeseeable exogenous variation, to causally identify the effect of social networks in determining trust. We use first-hand quantitative and qualitative data...

We examine the informal exchange of favors in societies such that any two individuals interact too infrequently to sustain exchange, but such that the social pressure of the possible loss of multiple relationships can sustain exchange. Patterns of exchange that are locally enforceable and...

Lending to the poor is expensive due to high screening, monitoring, and enforcement costs. Group lending advocates believe lenders overcome this by harnessing social connections. Using data from FINCA-Peru, I exploit a quasi-random group formation process to find evidence of peers successfully...

I provide a typology of social capital, breaking it down into seven more fundamental forms of capital: information capital, brokerage capital, coordination and leadership capital, bridging capital, favor capital, reputation capital, and community capital. I discuss how most of these forms of...