Mind the Gap! Social Capital, East and West

Jan Fidrmuc and Klarita Gërxhani

CEDI Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University

Abstract: Recent Eurobarometer survey data are used to document and explain the stock of social capital in 28 European countries. Social capital in Central and Eastern Europe – measured by civic participation and access to social networks – lags behind that in Western European countries. Using regression analysis of determinants of individual stock of social capital, we find that this gap persists when we account for individual characteristics and endowments of respondents but disappears completely after we control for aggregate measures of economic development and quality of institutions. Informal institutions such as prevalence of corruption in post-communist countries appear particularly important. With the enlargement of the European Union, the gap in social capital should gradually disappear as the new member states catch up (economically and institutionally) with the old ones.

Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2007-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-soc and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/342688/CEDI_07-10.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/342688/CEDI_07-10.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.brunel.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/342688/CEDI_07-10.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Mind the gap! Social capital, East and West (2008)
Working Paper: Mind the Gap! Social Capital, East and West (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:edb:cedidp:07-10

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEDI Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Economic Development and Institutions(CEDI), Brunel University CEDI, Brunel University,West London,UB8 3PH,United Kingdom. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarmistha Pal ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).