What Do Cross-Country Surveys Tell Us About Social Capital?
University of Zurich, Department of Economics, Working Paper No. 352, Revised version
21 Pages Posted: 1 Jul 2020 Last revised: 9 Jan 2023
There are 2 versions of this paper
What Do Lost Wallets Tell Us About Survey Measures of Social Capital?
What Do Cross-Country Surveys Tell Us About Social Capital?
Date Written: February 1, 2022
Abstract
We assess the predictive power of survey measures of social capital with a new behavioral data set that examines whether citizens report a lost wallet to its owner. Using data from more than 17,000 “lost” wallets across 40 countries, we find that survey measures of social capital — especially questions concerning generalized trust or generalized morality — are strongly and significantly correlated with country-level differences in wallet reporting rates. A second finding is that lost wallet reporting rates predict unique variation in the outputs of social capital, such as economic development and government effectiveness, not captured by existing measures.
Keywords: Social capital, trust, honesty, field experiment, surveys
JEL Classification: C93, C83, Z10, O10
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation