| Abstract:
Social capital and its role in economic performance have increasingly attracted the attention of the economists in recent years. In this paper, firstly, the definitions and concepts of social capital are reviewed. Then, channels through which social capital influences economic growth are examined. It is worth mentioning that in the context of generalized neoclassical growth models, three of them for the effects of social capital on economic growth are presented in this paper. In an empirical examination the data on surveys of "Iranians' Values and Judgments", "Iranians' cultural behavior", the data of Statistic Center of Iran and The Central Bank of Islamic Republic of Iran are used. On the basis of models of economic growth and spatial econometrics, the effect of social capital on economic growth of Iran's provinces during the time period 1379-82 (2000-2003) are examined. Empirical results show that social capital has a significant effect on economic growth. In effect, one unit increase of social capital index will increase the economic growth by 0.18 percent.
|