Cooperation and Discrimination Within and Across Language Borders: Evidence from Children in a Bilingual City

Silvia Angerer (), Daniela Glätzle-Rützler, Philipp Lergetporer and Matthias Sutter

No 9039, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We present experimental evidence from a bilingual city in Northern Italy on whether the language spoken by a partner in a prisoner's dilemma game affects behavior and leads to discrimination. Running a framed field experiment with 828 six- to eleven-year old primary school children in the city of Meran, we find that cooperation generally increases with age, but that the gap between cooperation among in-group members and cooperation towards children speaking another language is considerable and increasing with age. This gap is due to both, in-group favoritism and language group discrimination.

Keywords: language; discrimination; cooperation; children; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D03 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-soc and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published - published in: European Economic Review, 2016, 90, 254-264

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Related works:
Journal Article: Cooperation and discrimination within and across language borders: Evidence from children in a bilingual city (2016)
Working Paper: Cooperation and discrimination within and across language borders: Evidence from children in a bilingual city (2016)
Working Paper: Cooperation and discrimination within and across language borders: Evidence from children in a bilingual city (2015)
Working Paper: Cooperation and discrimination within and across language borders: Evidence from children in a bilingual city (2015)
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