Unveiling the main drivers of economic growth is of paramount importance. Previous research recognizes the critical role played by the factors of production: capital and labor. However, the exact mechanisms that underpin Total Factor Productivity (TFP) are not fully understood. An increasing number of studies suggests that the creation and transmission of knowledge, factor supply and economic integration are indeed crucial. Yet, the need for a systematic and unifying framework still exists. Nowadays capital and labor are embedded into a complex network structure through global supply chains and international migration. Recent research has established a link between network centralities and different types of social capital. In this work we employ the OECD’s Multi-Regional Input-Output and International Migration datasets to build the network representation for capital and labor of 63 economies during 10 years. We then examine the role of social capital measures as drivers of the TFP adopting an extended Cobb-Douglass production function and addressing potential issues such as multicollinearity, reverse causality and non-linear effects. Our results indicate that social capital in the factors of production networks can significantly drive economic outputs through TFP.

Global warming is a substantial issue, and addressing it requires robust data on corporate environmental performance. However, there is still an information gap in indirect emissions — particularly Scope 3 emissions — due to the small number of reporting companies, greenwashing practices, and methodological differences across reports. In this study, we propose a new Hybrid-LCA approach for estimating corporate Scope 3 emissions for a large universe of companies following the Greenhouse Gas Protocol framework. Our approach recovers expected trends in emissions while maintaining the comparability and transparency needed for decision-making. Moreover, we observe an asymmetric bias with respect to self-reported data from the Carbon Disclosure Project. Our analysis indicates that this bias is partially related to poor environmental management practices in firm disclosures, which we proxy by factoring in the verification status of firms' reports. This work calls for greater scrutiny in Scope 3 reporting to ensure the accuracy of emission data and promote better environmental management practices.

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