Mancur Olson and Robert Putnam provide two conflicting views on the effect of involvement with voluntary associations on their members. Putnam argues that associations instill in their members habits of cooperation, solidarity and public spiritedness. Olson emphasizes the tendency of groups to...

We provide non experimental evidence of the relevance of sociability on subjective wellbeing by investigating the determinants of life satisfaction on a large sample of Europeans aged above 50. We document that voluntary work, religious attendance, helping friends/neighbours and participation to...

The present paper is aimed at empirically verifying the role of the “common reason to believe” (Sugden 2003) and of framing (Bacharach 1999 and 2006) within the theory of team reasoning. The analysis draws on data collected trough a Traveler’s Dilemma experiment. To study the role of the...

Empirical analyses on the determinants of life satisfaction often include the impact of the number of children variable among available controls without fully discriminating between the two (socio- relational and pecuniary) components. In our empirical analysis on the German Socioeconomic Panel...

The present paper draws on data collected in an investment game plus a questionnaire to investigate whether happiness is affected by circumstances and/or outcomes of the game and to evaluate which motivations or preference structures (self-interested preferences, inequity aversion, altruism,...

The nexus between relational life and life satisfaction is riddled with endogeneity problems. By investigating the causal relationship going from the first to the second variable we consider that retirement is a shock which increases the time investable in (outside job) relational life. As a...

We analyse the experimental outcome of the Traveller's Dilemma under three different treatments - baseline (BT), compulsory ex post players' meeting (CET) and voluntary ex post players' meeting (VET) - to evaluate the effects of removal of anonymity (without preplay communication) in a typical...

The main contribution of this paper is twofold. First of all, it focuses on the decisional process that leads to the creation of a social norm. Secondly, it analyses the mechanisms through which subjects conform their behaviour to the norm. In particular, our aim is to study the role and the...

Social capital and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have received increasing attention in research on the role that elements such as trust, trustworthiness and social norms of reciprocity and cooperation may have in promoting socio-economic development. Although social capital and CSR seem...

Many scholars have stressed the importance of membership in associations as one of the main determinants of inter-personal trust (e.g. Zucker, 1986; Coleman, 1990; Lahno, 1995). In particular, Olson (1982) and Putnam et al. (1993) provided two different accounts of the role of private voluntary...