What Do Cross-Country Surveys Tell Us About Social Capital?

David Tannenbaumⓡ, Alain Cohnⓡ, Christian Lukas Zündⓡ, Michel André Maréchalⓡ and Michel Maréchal
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alain Cohn

No 8418, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We assess the predictive power of survey measures of social capital with a new behavioural data set that examines whether citizens report a lost wallet to its owner. Using data from more than 17,000 “lost” wallets across 40 countries, we find that survey measures of social capital —especially questions concerning generalized trust or generalized morality—are strongly and significantly correlated with country-level differences in wallet reporting rates. A second finding is that lost wallet reporting rates predict unique variation in the outputs of social capital, such as economic development and government effectiveness, not captured by existing measures.

Keywords: social capital; trust; honesty; field experiment; surveys (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C83 C93 O10 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: What do cross-country surveys tell us about social capital? (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8418

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