Groups, Growth and Trust: Cross-Country Evidence on the Olson and Putnam Hypotheses

Stephen Knack

Public Choice, 2003, vol. 117, issue 3-4, 55 pages

Abstract: Olson (1982) and Putnam (1993) provide sharply conflicting perspectives on the impact of private associations on economic well-being and social conflict. Olson (1982) emphasized their propensity to act as special interest groups that lobby for preferential policies, imposing disproportionate costs on the rest of society. Putnam (1993) viewed memberships in horizontal associations as a source of generalized trust and social ties conducive to governmental efficiency and economic performance. Using cross-country data, this paper investigates the impact of associational memberships on generalized trust and economic performance, finding little support for Olson's view of the impact of groups, and only mixed support for the Putnam perspective. Copyright 2003 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (101)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0048-5829/contents link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:kap:pubcho:v:117:y:2003:i:3-4:p:341-55

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().