Year: 1998
Type: article
Abstract: The conventional wisdom is that postwar economic growth has been unpredictable. In the 1960s few observers accurately forecast which countries would grow quickly. In this paper we show that indexes of social development constructed in the early 1960s have considerable predictive power. These results indicate the importance of “social capability” for economic growth. We emphasize that social arrangements matter for reasons beyond those discussed in recent work on trust and social capital. However, we are also able to show that one of the indexes may be a useful proxy for social capital in developing countries.
Authors: J. Temple, P. A. Johnson
Institutions: University of Oxford, Vassar College
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2132622358