Does Social Capital Have Economic Payoff in Russia?

NRU Higher School of Economics , 2011. No. 01.

Меняшев Р. Ш., Полищук Л. И.

In a number of studies social capital is shown to have substantial positive impact on econo-mic development, institutional performance, and quality of governance. So far no such analyses were available for Russia, and the present paper is intended to fill this gap. We propose a model which differentiates the impact on economic welfare of bridging and bonding forms of social capital. The empirical part of the study is based on 2007 survey data collected in the Geo-Rating project. We establish significant positive relationship between bridging social capital and urban development in Russia. Bonding social capital works in the opposite direction: its impact on development is negative. It is further shown that the transmission mechanism between social capital and economic outcomes is based on municipal governance: bridging social capital improves government accountability, whereas bonding social capital reduces the political costs of malfeasance and thus facilitates the abuse of power.

Ключевые слова: социальный капитал, качество управления, social capital, муниципальное управление, социология экономики, quality of governance, municipal governance