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...

Trust in strangers is key for economic development. Social capital theory posits that participation in associations is essential to propagate trust in society, because membership instils trust both towards other members and generalised others. We provide an experimental test for this thesis. We...

The present paper draws on an original dataset collected by the author to investigate if: i)the relational network and the human capital developed by unemployed volunteers through their associational membership are useful in finding a job; ii)the likelihood to get a job is higher for volunteers...