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 carries out a preliminary and exploratory investigation into the effect of various types of social interaction on health in Italy. After controlling for household income, education, work status and a number of socio-demographic variables, we find that the frequency of meetings with...

This paper investigates the determinants of job satisfaction in Italy with particular emphasis on social relations. Our econometric analysis is based on four waves (1993, 1995, 1998 and 2000) of the Multipurpose Household Survey conducted annually by the Italian Central Statistics Office. The...