Leading Research Fellow of the ICSID Ekaterina Borisova took part in a research seminar in Lucca (Italy)

Ekaterina presented her paper “Bridging or Bonding? Preferences for Redistribution and Social Capital in Russia” (co-authored with A. Govorun and D. Ivanov) at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca on December 24^th, 2017.

IMT organizes and promotes Research Seminars focused on issues related to the activities of the Research Areas, the Research Units and the didactic activities of the Institute. Research seminars are offered to transmit highly-specific and avant-garde concepts and, at the same time, are accessible to a wide student audience. 

Abstract: Does bridging or bonding social capital matter for redistribution preferences? Existing literature demonstrates causal link between measures of social capital and such preferences, but does it mostly for developed countries with good enforcement of formal rules and without a distinction between two completely different types of social capital. We argue that welfare state relies on contributions from an immense number of anonymous citizens, thus attitudes towards strangers, i.e. generalized trust and solidarity should be salient. Using two surveys of about 34,000 and 37,000 Russians we prove this proposition showing the importance of the bridging type but not the bonding one. Instrumenting social capital with education, climate and distance from Moscow we deal with endogeneity concerns. Additionally we claim that connection between social capital and redistribution preferences for less developed countries such as Russia could be similar to developed countries.