European Business Schools Librarian's Group
Working Papers,
University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics
No 05-6: The Long and Winding Road: Social Capital and Commuting
Odile Poulsen () and Gert Tinggaard Svendsen ()
Additional contact information
Odile Poulsen: Department of Economics, Aarhus School of Business, Postal: The Aarhus School of Business, Prismet, Silkeborgvej 2, DK 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Gert Tinggaard Svendsen: Aarhus University, Department of Public Policy, Postal: Aarhus University, Department of Public Policy, Building 331 Bartholins Alle, 8000 Aarhus C,
Abstract: We develop a two-sector model to analyze which kind of social
organization generates trust. Social capital is de…ned as trust. We examine two
communities: the bedroom community in which people commute long distance
to work and the virility community in which people do not commute to work.
The hypothesis is that people do not have time to interact spontaneously out-
side work in the bedroom community. We show that in the bedroom community
social capital cannot accumulate. Hence our results show that time spent in-
teracting with your neighbor must be added as an important production factor
when considering the formation of social capital in society. Thus, in a commu-
nity where agents only interact when producing output, social capital may not
accumulate To our knowledge, no such attempt to model social capital has yet
been undertaken and this gap or ‘missing link’in economic debates has to be
developed to grasp a more holistic understanding of the big di¤erences in the
wealth of nations or regions
Keywords: Social capital; Two-Sector Model; Indeterminacy
27 pages, September 2, 2005
Full text files
05-6_odpgts.pdf
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