Author(s):	Benjamin Fuchs, Aderonke Osikominu
Publication Date:	June 2016
Keyword(s):	Human Capital, leisure activities, nonacademic skills, sports, treatment effect, youth development
JEL(s):	I21, J13, J24
Programme Areas:	Labour Economics
Link to this Page:	cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=11330

This paper first develops a simple model to clarify the links between leisure time use and skill formation. It then explores empirically how youths allocate their time. We focus on sports as a popular activity and estimate its effect on behavioral and economic outcomes. We exploit data from the German Socio-Economic Panel that offers the unique advantage of both a large, representative sample and high quality behavioral measures. We employ a flexible strategy combining propensity score matching and regression to account for self selection. Our results suggest that structured leisure activities like sports contribute to the development of nonacademic skills.