Building social capital: Conditional cash transfers and cooperation

B-Tier
Journal: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Year: 2015
Volume: 118
Issue: C
Pages: 22-39

Score contribution per author:

0.670 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Many conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have important social components and, therefore, can have an effect on social capital. In 2007, we conducted a field experiment with 1451 subjects in Cartagena, Colombia. We interpret the behavior in the game as a measure of what in the literature has been called social capital. We played the game in two similar and adjacent neighborhoods. The ‘treatment’ neighborhood, Pozón, had been targeted for over 2 years by a CCT program, Familias en Acción; the ‘control’ neighborhood, Ciénaga, had not. In 2008, with the program being implemented in both neighborhoods, we played the same public goods game, and were therefore able to implement a difference in differences strategy to estimate the impact of the CCT on our measure of social capital.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:jeborg:v:118:y:2015:i:c:p:22-39
Journal Field
Theory
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-24