Investigating the link between social cooperation sector and economic well-being of Italian provinces through the lens of social capital

This paper investigates, through the lens of social capital, the contribution of social cooperation to the economic well-being of Italian provinces. The empirical investigation is in two phases. First, I carry out a cross-sectional analysis on data from 2015 to 2019 to verify whether social-cooperation diffusion, expressed by social-cooperative-employee density, is positively related to a composite index of social capital. This analysis confirms the hypothesis that the diffusion of social cooperation effectively approximates the territorial social-capital endowment. Second, I structure a panel data analysis for the period 2012 to 2017 to investigate the link between social cooperation as a source of social capital and the economic well-being of Italian provinces. The results of this analysis corroborate the hypothesis-consistent with copious literature showing the positive role of social capital in the economic development processes-that social cooperation positively affects material living conditions through the generation of social value.