Social Assets

George J. Mailath () and Andrew Postlewaite ()

PIER Working Paper Archive from Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: We present a model incorporating both social and economic components, and analyze their interaction. The notion of a social asset, an attribute that has value only because of the social institutions governing society, is introduced. In the basic model, agents match on the basis of income and unproductive attributes. An attribute has value in some equilibrium social institutions (matching patterns), but not in others. We then show that productive attributes (such as education) can have their value increased above their inherent productive value by some social institutions, leading to the notion of the social value of an asset.

Keywords: Social assets; social capital; social arrangements; nonmarket interactions; social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D20 D31 D5 J41 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-soc
Date: 2002-02-07, Revised 2006-01-05
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Related works:
Working Paper: Social Assets (2004)
Journal Article: SOCIAL ASSETS (2006)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pen:papers:06-003

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