On Representative Social Capital

Abstract

This paper analyzes data for a random sample drawn from the Dutch population who reveal their capacity to provide and sustain social capital by their propensity to invest and reward investments by means of an economic experiment. We have three main results. First, we find that heterogeneity in behavior is characterized by several asymmetries -- men, the young and elderly, and low educated individuals invest relatively less, but reward significantly more investments. Second, higher expected levels of investments have a positive and significant effect on the level of investments themselves, corroborating the presence of social norms. Third, we compare our results with a laboratory experiment conducted with a student sample. We find that the student sample provides a lower bound of the population level of social capital.