Trust-based social capital, institutions, and development

We estimate fixed-effects and Arellano–Bond GMM equations using panel data from a large group of developing countries and test whether trust-based social capital, proxied by contract-intensive money, complements the role of institutions in promoting development. The results we obtain provide robust evidence that social capital enhances the contribution of institutions when we focus on political institutions and weaker evidence when we use civil liberties. Both social capital and institutions have positive effects on income but the relationships these variables have with income tend to be non-monotonic. Moreover, social capital has a positive influence on the effectiveness of human capital.