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Social capital, innovation and economic development
theme	Theme 2: The role of technology in growth and development
client	METEOR, Maastricht University (PhD position)
time frame	2005-2008
researcher(s)	Semih Akçomak Bas ter Weel
description	Economic performance is positively correlated with innovative activities such as, expenditure for research and development. It is also known that societies in which people enjoy each other's confidence, experience a higher level of economic performance. The combination of these two observations has not received attention but could imply that societies with a higher level of trust are better able to manage the process of innovation and that creative effort is more richly rewarded in relatively trusting societies. It is believed that inter-agent interactions that form trust and social capital are essential and have become more important for understanding economic outcomes, but they have not been incorporated in models and have hardly been considered in empirical work. These inter-agent interactions and social connectiveness can substitute for missing institutions in facilitating innovation and economic development. The present project will examine the relationship between regional development, innovation, creativity, trust and measures of social capital in the regions of the European Union (EU). The main research programme involves building a body of theory and evidence of the effects of the interplay of trust, social capital and innovation on economic development and identifying the underlying socio-economic mechanisms that create social capital to foster development.
deliverables	Akçomak, I.S., and ter Weel, B. (2008), The impact of social capital on crime: Evidence from the Netherlands, UNU-MERIT Working Paper No: 2008-042. Akçomak, I.S., and ter Weel, B. (2006), Social Capital, Innovation and Growth: Evidence from Europe, UNU-MERIT Working Paper No: 2006-040. Akçomak, I.S., and Parto, S. (2006) "How 'black' is the black sheep compared to all others: Turkey and the EU ", UNU-MERIT Working Paper No: 2006-024. Akçomak, I.S., and ter Weel, B. (October, 2005) "How do social capital and government support affect innovation and growth? Evidence from the EU regional support programs", Mimeo, UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University.

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