Global Evidence on Economic Preferences

Abstract

and Berlin. Ammar Mahran provided outstanding research assistance and Markus Antony outstanding administrative support. Falk acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council through ERC # 209214. Dohmen acknowledges financial support from NWO Vidi grant 452-10-006, and from Netspar. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Cross-country relationships between life expectancy, intertemporal choice and age at first birth

“…2017) and economic behaviours (Falk et al, 2015), identifying ecological variables that predict aggregate intertemporal decision-making may be useful to public health specialists and other professionals aiming to improve outcomes predicted by intertemporal choice. For example, developing a reliable account of the factors which predict health investment by accounting for various ecological predictors would enable those creating health campaigns to target those areas where potentially deleterious decision-making patterns are most likely to emerge.…”

Attitudes Towards Large Income Risk in Welfare States: An International Comparison

“…However, due to moral hazard this risk is not independent of the di¤erent generosities: a more generous paid sickness leave arrangement may invite people to call in sick more often, while a high unemployment rate may discourage ill people to report ill. Hence the Norwegian …gure is almost certainly overstating the "true" risk of illness, 33 while that for Chile may be understating it. We therefore assume a uniform risk of illness and rank the countries w.r.t.…”

“…I.e., they need not state a certainty equivalent or a probability premium. 6 to the hypothetical lottery questions or measures of risk attitudes derived from those answers correlate well with di¤erent kinds of risk behaviours, such as …nancial risk taking, occupational choice and health behaviours: Kimball et al (2008) and Sahm (2012) …nd a strong association of elicited risk tolerance on stock holding; Ahn (2010) and Brown et al (2011) …nd strong associations with the decision to become self-employed; Falk et al (2017) …nd strong correlation between the risk tolerance measure derived from the answers to the hypothetical "staircase risk task" and self-employment and smoking intensity. 14 Irrespective of whether stakes are real of hypothetical, there is still the issue that participation into the survey may be prone to selection because people with a larger opportunity cost of time may choose not to participate.…”

“…However, this aggregate measure 32 Six US states did have a sickness pay programme in 2002: Rhode Island, California, New Jersey, New York, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. 33 Markussen et al (2011) show that the high overall Norwegian level of sickness absence hides an unequal distribution: as much as 10% of the workforce can be absent for more than 15% of the time. They …nd that the Norwegian sickness insurance system is extensively used to cover other risks (e.g., traumatic personal events related to the family) than just own diagnosed illnesses, and that when the 100% replacement rate is about to terminate after one year, the weekly recovery rate makes a 6-fold jump, suggesting a strong moral hazard e¤ect.…”

“…But there may also be a selection issue: if students'risk aversion depends negatively on student income (DARA), but average student income relative to GDP p/c depends su¢ ciently negative on GDP p/c (because a student's (or her parent's) resources matter less to gain access to higher education in developed countries). E.g., in Falk et al (2017), using samples that are representative for the adult populations, the correlation between risk tolerance and GDP p/c is positive, small and insigni…cant.…”