Beyond the Buzzword `Social Capital´ in Economics

GUILLERMO CRUCES

STICERD Annual Review

STICERD (Suntory Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines)

Lugar: Londres, Reino Unido; Año: 2001 p. 12 - 15

1461-8206

How would you explain the difference in institutional performance between the North and the South of Italy? What are the causes of the African growth tragedy? Why is the Grameen Bank successful while similar projects in other countries failed miserably? And more important: would you say that there is something in common between these ideas and, for example, the decay of associational life in the United States? Imagine for a moment that we have a concept, an idea that could explain all this and much more. It would be like discovering the philosopher´s stone for the social sciences. This was almost the feeling at the beginning of the nineteen-nineties when the concept of social capital started to gain momentum in development studies and the social sciences in general.