@techreport{Ogilvie2004abuse,
abstract = {Guilds are social scientists? favoured historical example of institutions generating a ?social
capital? of trust that benefited entire economies. This article considers this view in the light of
empirical findings for early modern Europe. It draws the distinction between a ?particularized?
trust in persons of known attributes and a ?generalized? trust that applies even to strangers.
This is paralleled by the distinction between a ?differential? trust in institutions that enforce
the rights of certain groups and a ?uniform? trust in impartial institutions that enforce the
rights of all. Guilds had the potential to generate the particularized and differential trust to
solve market failures relating to product quality, training, and innovation, although the
empirical findings suggest that they often failed to fulfil this potential. Guilds also had the
potential to abuse their trust, and the empirical findings show that they indeed manipulated
their social capital of shared norms, common information, mutual sanctions, and collective
political action to benefit their members at others? expense, blocking the spread of generalized
and uniform trust. Counter to the assumptions of social capital theory, the example of preindustrial
guilds suggests that the particularized and differential trust fostered by associative
institutions do not favour but hinder the generalized and uniform trust fostered by impartial
institutions.},
author = {Sheilagh Ogilvie},
copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen},
keywords = {Z13; O17; N43; N63; L4; 330; Zunft; Vertrauen; Social Capital; Europa},
language = {eng},
number = {1302},
title = {The use and abuse of trust : social capital and its deployment by early modern guilds},
type = {CESifo working papers},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/18667},
year = {2004}
}
