Desarrollo Y Subdesarrollo

1. Introduction
The last 15 years have seen enormous progress in the study of social capital. A recent keyword search in EconLit identified over 1000 citations. Scholarly interest in the concept of social capital is motivated essentially by the relationship between the stock of social capital and its relation to effective political institutions, economic development, low crime rates, andreduced incidences of other social problems. Following Coleman, 1988 and Coleman, 1990 and Putnam (1993), many economists have argued that social capital positively influences economic growth and development. Social capital promotes trust and cooperation among agents, which in turn increases socially efficient collective action (La Porta et al., 1997). Although support among academics for the socialcapital concept is overwhelming, it is not free of detractors (e.g., Portes, 1998, Arrow, 2000, Solow, 2000, DeFilippis, 2001 and Durlauf, 2002).
Ultimately the value of social capital rests upon its ability to contribute to a more efficient “round-about” means of production. As in the case of traditional capital, it is more efficient to invest in producing an intermediate good that in turnbecomes an input into the production of a final good, than to produce the final good directly. By investing in relationships that reduce transactions costs, we can reduce the friction in productive activities. But this investment requires the commitment of scarce resources so there is always the fundamental question of how much of any individual's scarce resources should go to building social capital.A primary weakness of the social capital concept is the lack of consensus on its definition and its meaning. Coleman (1988, p.598) defines social capital as “a variety of different entities, with two elements in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structure, and they facilitate certain actions of actors – whether personal or corporate actors – within the structure”. According toPutnam (1995, p.19), “… social capital refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them”. Fukuyama (1995) defines social capital in terms of cultural values such as degrees of compassion, altruism, and tolerance. Although an exact meaning remains elusive, these definitions have common elements that point to a solid basefor a formal definition. Toward this end, Wollcock (2001) defines social capital as norms and networks that facilitate collective action. Formation of groups and other forms of civic activity or collective action are at the heart of this definition.
The dearth of research on determinants of social capital has held back its use as a policy tool in economic and social development, and Glaeser(2001) sees this as a major shortcoming in current and past research. While Putnam and others (Paxton, 1999) have extensively studied change in social capital over time, they provide little insight as to why cross-sectional variations exist in social capital (Durlauf, 2002).
Recent studies have attempted to delineate the causes or sources of social capital (Brehm and Rahn, 1997, Alesina and LaFerrara, 2000, Glaeser et al., 2000, Glaeser et al., 2002 and Charles and Kline, 2002). In this paper, we attempt to substantiate these claims empirically, by investigating the factors associated with variation in social capital levels across US counties using new indicators. We base our empirical analysis on Becker's (1965) allocation of time framework, and use an array of individual andcommunity-level factors as determinants of social capital.
Notwithstanding the lack of a precise definition, a major obstacle in developing the concept of social capital is the lack of reliable data, both cross-sectional and time-series. We examine some of the most commonly referred proxies of social capital for which accurate data are available, for example the density of civic, religious, and sports...