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Most of the literature focused on the social capital-growth nexus has followed the one-sizefits-all approach, neglecting that regional disparities might modify this relationship. This article analyses the role of two social capital indicators on the growth of 237 European regions in the period 1995-2007 by implementing non-parametric regression, which relaxes the linearity assumption and allows the data to give the underlying functional form. The results show that social capital effects on growth are nonlinear. Parameter heterogeneity could also be examined, showing heterogenous effects across regions and over time. In particular, social capital is mostly negative in regions from Eastern and Central Europe during the first years of transition from socialism to market economies. However, this pattern has changed in the more recent period.

This paper analyses the relationship between informal institutions measured by social trust and the provision of private credit. Research on the trust–finance relationship abounds, although most of it is confined to the micro-level, with far fewer contributions from a wide, cross-country perspective. Considering a sample of 119 economies in the period 1993–2015, results suggest that social trust is an important determinant of private credit, and that its effects are transmitted indirectly via some particular aspects of the quality of economic-judicial institutions. In addition, and contrary to previous findings in related areas, substitutive effects for informal and formal institutions are not found. Therefore, informal institutions can improve the quality of the certain types of formal institutions but they are, per se, unable to replace them in the provision of credit. Accordingly, a solid economic-judicial system becomes essential to guarantee credit transactions.

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This paper assesses the role of the associational activity dimension of social capital in regional innovation for 257 EU 28 regions in the pre-crisis (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007) and the crisis (2008-2012) period. The analysis is carried out using flexible non-parametric kernel regressions, which allow for exploring heterogeneity across space and over time. The results show that effects widely differ across regions, but no differences are found between periods. In particular, the largest effects are found for less developed and transition regions from the periphery. In contrast, for most of the developed regions in the core of Europe the impact is non-significant. These results might be useful for policy design in the H2020 framework.