Regional Social Capital and Economic Growth: Exploratory Evidence from Testing the Virtuous Spiral vs. Vicious Cycle Model for Greece

Irene Daskalopoulou and Athanasia Karakitsiou
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Athanasia Karakitsiou: Department of Business Administration, International Hellenic University, 62124 Serres, Greece

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 15, 1-25

Abstract: The aim of the present study is to analyze social capital as a spatial resource that regions might use differently in their developmental process. We propose a theoretical framework in order to identify the different regional social capital workings as leading to either an open system of relations (the virtuous social capital—development spiral) or to a rather closed system of relations (the vicious social capital—development cycle). At the empirical level, we test the presence of these two developmental paths by two operational hypotheses that are tested through the development and use of appropriate entropy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) techniques. Our analysis involves an inclusive theorization of social capital as composed of trust, norms/values, and networks. Using individual and aggregate level economic indicators, we obtain different rankings of the Greek regions compared to the initial entropy weights rankings. Overall, our results provide support to the presence of both developmental paths in the case of Greece while the Greek regions might be categorized as dynamic, stagnant, and unstable.

Keywords: social capital; spatial analysis; multi-criteria analysis; ranking methods; TOPSIS; entropy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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