Homo Socio-Economicus: Foundational to Social Economics and the Social Economy
Author(s)
O’Boyle, Edward J.
Abstract
The concept of social capital as an important determinant of economic development is attracting increasing attention among development economists. The present paper analyses the impact of macro-level social capital on economic development in 34 European countries. Macro-level social capital comprises different aspects of institutional quality and is closely related to the income distribution and social cohesion. We used principal component analysis to group initially selected social determinants of economic development into three components (human and social capital, income equality, and redistribution), which altogether described 64.4% of the variation of the initial variables. Following regression analysis proved that all these components have a positive effect on economic development, measured by human development index.
