Relational Capability Index 2.0
Gaël GIRAUD, Paris School of Economics; C.N.R.S. (French National Center for Scientific
Research); University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Rakesh GUPTA N. R., Paris School of Economics; ESSEC Business School; University of Paris
1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Cécile RENOUARD, ESSEC Business School.
Thomas ROCA, Agence Française de Développement.
Summary
Relational Capabilities, as introduced by Giraud et al. (2013) aims to introduce social capital
and social inclusion in the capabilities paradigm. This paper presents RCI 2.0, an alternative
version of the Relational Capability Index (RCI). It is tailored for long-run monitoring of a
country’s performance and cross-country comparison. It gives due consideration to the critics
on aggregation methods that applies to multidimensional development indicators or ‘composite’
indexes. For the first time, we use the Gallup World Poll database. The richness of the
database allows disintegrating the RCI 2.0 into different groups: rural vs. urban, by gender,
and by income levels - across the world - decoupling the possibility of analysis. Our results
verify second order stochastic dominance across all the aforementioned groups when weighted
by population size. We also find RCI 2.0 to be strongly correlated to the Human Development
Index and income levels in our sample of countries.
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