Social capital formation across space: proximity and trust in European regions

Giorgio Fazio and Luciano Lavecchia

Working Papers from Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow

Abstract: An extensive economics and regional science literature has discussed the importance of social capital for economic growth and development. Yet, what social capital is and how it is formed are elusive issues, which require further investigation. Here, we refer to social capital in terms of “civic capital” and “good culture” as rephrased by Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales (2010) and Tabellini (2010). The accumulation of this kind of capital allows the emerging of regional informal institutions, which may help explaining differences in regional development. In this paper, we take a regional perspective and use exploratory space and space-time methods to assess whether geography, via proximity, contributes to the formation of social capital across European regions. In particular, we ask whether generalized trust, a fundamental constituent of social capital and an ingredient of economic development, tends to be clustered across space and over time. From the policy standpoint, the spatial “hysteresis” of regional trust may contribute to the formation of “spatial traps” of social capital and act as a further barrier to regional economic development and convergence.

Keywords: Social Capital; Generalized Trust; European Social Survey; Spatial Dynamics; ESTDA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C31 F02 R1 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: Social capital formation across space: proximity and trust in European regions (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gla:glaewp:2012_07

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