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

European Economic Review, 2016, vol. 90, issue C, 254-264

Abstract: We present experimental evidence from a bilingual city in Northern Italy on whether the affiliation to a specific language group affects behavior in a prisoner׳s dilemma game 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 develops with age. This gap is due to both in-group favoritism and language group discrimination. While the former is persistent across all age groups and both language groups and accounts for most of the discrimination observed, the latter only emerges in later years of primary school among children belonging to the German language group.

Keywords: Cooperation; Discrimination; Language; Children; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D03 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (48)

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Related works:
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)
Working Paper: Cooperation and Discrimination Within and Across Language Borders: Evidence from Children in a Bilingual City (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:90:y:2016:i:c:p:254-264

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2016.02.022

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