'Individual' Social Capital, 'Social' Networks, and Their Linkages to Economic Game

Abstract: This essay makes a conceptual distinction between societal categories, such as social networks, norms, and social status differentiation, on the one hand, and social capital, on the other. The former are institutional phenomena arising as outcomes of social-exchange games in which individual agents invest strategically in social capital. Recent development of neuroscience suggests the future possibility of measuring social payoffs in terms of tradeoff relationships with hedonic payoffs. This possibility may suggest that a linked-game approach to social capital and its implications for economic performance are more promising. This approach might make feasible an analysis of socioeconomic network that is not possible using an economic or sociological approach in isolation. Particularly, this essay suggests a way to apply the linked-game approach to the problem of the tragedy of the commons, which is becoming one of most acute public issues of our time.