Building social capital: Conditional cash transfers and cooperation

Orazio Attanasio, Sandra Polania-Reyes and Luca Pellerano

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2015, vol. 118, issue C, 22-39

Abstract: Many conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have important social components and, therefore, can have an effect on social capital. In 2007, we conducted a field experiment with 1451 subjects in Cartagena, Colombia. We interpret the behavior in the game as a measure of what in the literature has been called social capital. We played the game in two similar and adjacent neighborhoods. The ‘treatment’ neighborhood, Pozón, had been targeted for over 2 years by a CCT program, Familias en Acción; the ‘control’ neighborhood, Ciénaga, had not. In 2008, with the program being implemented in both neighborhoods, we played the same public goods game, and were therefore able to implement a difference in differences strategy to estimate the impact of the CCT on our measure of social capital.

Keywords: Behavioral experiments; Social preferences; Social capital; Conditional cash transfer programs; Cooperation; Public goods provision (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D70 D78 H41 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:118:y:2015:i:c:p:22-39

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2015.04.004

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