Social capital as social networks. A new framework for measurement

Abstract

The contribution of this paper to the social capital literature is twofold. Drawing on the Italian data, it firstly provides a new framework for measurement, allowing to build indicators for five different components of the multidimensional concept of social capital. Secondly, it provides a single, synthetic, measure capturing that particular configuration of social capital which the literature generally associates with positive economic outcomes. This measure is here referred to as “developmental social capital”.Social capital, Social networks, Economic development, Principal component analysis, Multiple factor analysis