Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. This paper demonstrates gender differences in risk aversion and ambiguity aversion. It also contributes to a growing literature relating economic preference parameters to psychological measures by asking whether variations in preference parameters among persons, and in particular across genders, can be accounted for by differences in personality traits and traits of cognition. Women are more risk averse than men. Over an initial range, women require no further compensation for the introduction of ambiguity but men do. At greater levels of ambiguity, women have the same marginal distaste for increased ambiguity as men. Psychological variables account for some of the interpersonal variation in risk aversion. They explain none of the differences in ambiguity.JEL Classification: J24, D03, D80

This study investigates the relationship between time preferences and lifetime social and economic outcomes. We use a Swedish longitudinal data set that links information from a large survey on children's time preferences at age 13 to administrative registers spanning over five decades. Our results indicate a substantial adverse relationship between high discount rates and school performance, health, labour supply and lifetime income. Males and high-ability children gain significantly more from being future oriented. These discrepancies are largest regarding outcomes later in life. We also show that the relationship between time preferences and long-run outcomes operates through early human capital investments.Every day people make decisions that involve balancing costs and benefits occurring at different points in time. Such choices include whether or not to drop out of school, search for a new job or start saving. Intertemporal decision-making has been a cornerstone in many economic models since Samuelson (1937), and a salient feature in human capital theory, where the notion is that people with high discount rates invest less in their future than people who are more future oriented (Mincer, 1958;Becker, 1964). As the full returns to many human capital investments are not revealed until some time later, it is remarkable that there are few empirical studies which link time preferences to long-term outcomes. 1 This lacuna is especially evident regarding investments made early in life. Needless to say, childhood represents a critical period when many important investments are made with potentially life-long consequences. With a small number of exceptions (Mischel et al., 1989;Cadena and Keys, 2011;Moffitt et al., 2011), the existing evidence on the connection between time preferences and real-world outcomes is cross-sectional in nature and focuses on the adult population.This study investigates the relationship between time preferences during childhood and long-run social and economic outcomes. We use a Swedish longitudinal data set that links survey-based information on 11,907 children's time preferences at age 13 to administrative registers spanning over five decades. Time preferences are measured through a questionnaire in which children are asked to rate the extent to which they prefer SEK 900 (US$ 138) today over SEK 9,000 (US$ 1,380) in five years. 2 We

Intelligence quotient (IQ), grades, and scores on achievement tests are widely used as measures of cognition, but the correlations among them are far from perfect. This paper uses a variety of datasets to show that personality and IQ predict grades and scores on achievement tests. Personality is relatively more important in predicting grades than scores on achievement tests. IQ is relatively more important in predicting scores on achievement tests. Personality is generally more predictive than IQ on a variety of important life outcomes. Both grades and achievement tests are substantially better predictors of important life outcomes than IQ. The reason is that both capture personality traits that have independent predictive power beyond that of IQ.IQ | achievement tests | grades | personality traits I ntelligence quotient (IQ), grades, and scores on achievement tests are widely used as measures of cognition (1, 2) (SI Appendix, Appendix S1 documents the widespread use of achievement tests as measures of IQ). However, the correlations among them are far from perfect. This paper establishes the predictive power of personality for grades and scores on achievement tests. Personality is a better predictor of a variety of life outcomes than IQ. Both grades and scores on achievement tests have independent predictive power above and beyond IQ, because both measures capture aspects of personality.Achievement tests were designed to capture general knowledge acquired in school and life (3-5). They were thought to be more objective and fair than grades, which involve teacher assessments of individual students in particular classrooms. Tests of fluid intelligence were designed to capture "innate aptitudes" rather than acquired knowledge (6).The recent literature has shown that there is no clear distinction between innate and acquired traits. A large body of research shows that IQ can be altered by interventions (7,8). Additionally, all measures of ability are based on knowledge as gauged by performance on tasks (e.g., taking a test) (9). Not only is knowledge acquired but greater cognitive ability facilitates acquisition of knowledge. Personality traits also affect acquisition of knowledge. More motivated people learn more (10). In addition, more conscientious people take tests more seriously (11). Personality traits also influence grades. It was precisely because grades depend on personality that achievement tests were advocated as better measures of cognition. Achievement tests were thought to be independent of teacher assessments of noncognitive traits that were often deemed to be biased (4,5). This paper makes the following points. (i) Grades, scores on achievement tests, and IQ are strongly positively correlated but not perfectly so. This strong correlation gives purchase to the view that the three measures can be used interchangeably.(ii) Grades and scores on achievement tests are differentially influenced by IQ and personality. Grades are more heavily influenced by personality than achievement tests. (iii) All three me...

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. In many Western countries, the relative weight of people -measured by the Body Mass Index (BMI) -has increased substantially in recent years, leading to an increasing incidence of overweight and related health problems. As with many forms of risky behavior, it is plausible that overweight is related to the individual discount rate. Increases in credit card debts, the rise in gambling and the development of a more hedonic life style, suggest that the average discount rate has increased over time. This increase may have been the cause of the increase in BMI. Applying a large set of indicators for the individual discount rate, this paper analyzes whether changes in time discounting can account for differences in body mass between individuals at a given point in time and whether changes in the average individual discount rate can explain the remarkable increase in BMI experienced in recent years. We find some evidence for a link between time discounting and differences in BMI between people, but this relationship depends strongly on the choice of the proxy for the discount rate. Giving our hypothesis the best chance, we analyze the development of the time discounting proxies that are most strongly related to BMI. We find no evidence for a change of these proxies over time. Our main conclusion therefore is that overweight might be related to the way people discount future health benefits, but the increase in BMI has to be explained by shifts in other parameters that determine the intertemporal decisions regarding the trade-off of current and future health and satisfaction. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SJEL Classification: I1