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Socialisation, trust and reciprocity among young people

Summary

This paper analyzes the contribution of youth’s different time allocations to positive behaviors in exchanges. Psychologists highlight that time spent within voluntary organizations fosters positive development. The paper aims at deepening the knowledge of the psychological bases of the observed outcomes of a basic trust game. Undergraduate students played a basic trust game; after this, information about the use of their spare time was collected. Higher passed amounts positively correlate with time spent in youth organizations. The main novelties of the paper are: the way social capital is measured and the strong link with the psychological literature.

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Correspondence to Matteo Migheli.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Migheli, M. Socialisation, trust and reciprocity among young people. Swiss J Economics Statistics 148, 77–95 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399361

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