I examine the causal relation between social capital and corruption. A simple model illustrates potential mechanisms and yields testable implications, which I estimate in a sample of European countries. The estimated effect of social capital on corruption is found to be robust to the inclusion...

Based on institutional economics, the paper develops a new model pointing at two main reasons why Scandinavia is doing so well in economic terms, namely the level of decentralisation and social capital in its broad sense. The idea in the model is that a political system, which decentralises...

Previous findings suggest that income inequality leads to lower legal quality. This paper <p> argues that voters’ tolerance of inequality exerts an additional influence. Empirical <p> findings suggest that inequality leads to lower legal quality due to its effect on trust <p> while the tolerance of...</p></p></p>

We hypothesize, that power centralisation in a political system leads to more corruption due to the <p> monopoly power status of bureaucrats. Corruption again would then lead to a lower level of social capital, <p> here measured as trust, and slow down economic growth even further. Indeed, when...</p></p>

Social capital has not been measured in any general way yet as previous surveys have used their own ad hoc methodologies. This fact is due to the heterogeneity of the very definition of social capital. Therefore, consensus concerning measurement has not yet been reached. Based on ten existing...

We develop a two-sector model to analyze which kind of social <p> organization generates social capital. The hypothesis is that social capital must <p> be added as an important production factor when considering decentralization <p> of production. Thus, market centralization processes in a capitalist...</p></p></p>

This paper shows a new way to approach the analysis of international environmental problems and provides a heuristic 'comparative instrument analysis' using this approach. The conclusion is that economic instruments provide certain desirable properties, especially the achievement of cost...

This paper addresses the question about strategic incentives in international environmental agreements and tries to give a positive description of how the design of the agreement influences the strategic behaviour of potential participants before they enter the treaty. A common feature of the...

This paper connects two strands of the literature on social trust by estimating the effects of trust on growth through a set of potential transmission mechanisms directly. It does so by modelling the process using a three-stage least squares estimator on a sample of countries for which a full...

This study investigates empirically how residence in ethnic enclaves affects labour market <p> outcomes of refugees. Self-selection into ethnic enclaves in terms of unobservable characteristics <p> is taken into account by exploitation of a Danish spatial dispersal policy which randomly <p> disperses new...</p></p></p>