Incentive-Enhancing Preferences: Personality, Behavior, and Earnings

Bowles, Samuel; Gintis, Herbert; Osborne, Melissa

doi:10.1257/aer.91.2.155

Cited by 261 publications

(203 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…In particular, we try to work out the extent to which different dimensions of personality traits have an effect on transitions out of unemployment and on the duration of this subsequent employment. As mentioned in Bowles et al (2001), traits might have different effects for women and men, or different ethnic or language groups.…”

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confidence: 99%

Unemployment duration and personality

Uysal

Pohlmeier

2011

Journal of Economic Psychology

171

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This paper focuses on the role personality traits play in determining individual unemployment duration. We argue that a worker's job search intensity is decisively driven by her personality traits, reflected in her propensity to motivate and control herself while searching for a job. Moreover, personality traits, in as far as they can be signaled to a potential employer, may also enhance the probability of receiving and accepting a job offer.For our econometric duration analysis, we use the well-accepted taxonomy "Big Five" to classify personality traits. Based on individual unemployment data taken from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) our empirical findings reveal that the personality traits Conscientiousness and Neuroticism have a strong impact on the instantaneous probability of finding a job, where the former has a positive effect and the latter has a negative effect. The direction of the effect on the subsequent employment duration is the opposite. We do not find any significant effects of the personality traits Extraversion and Agreeableness on the duration of unemployment. The personality traitOpenness eases finding a job only for female unemployed workers and workers with migration background.

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confidence: 99%

Unemployment duration and personality

Uysal

Pohlmeier

2011

Journal of Economic Psychology

171

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“…(...) Learning is a dynamic process and is most effective when it begins at a young age and continues through to adulthood " (Heckman 2000). We have evidence that success in the labor market is partly determined by behavioral traits and that these traits are genetically and socially transmitted (Bowles et al 2001a and2001b). A few M a n u s c r i p t studies have also found a positive association between parents and children locus of control suggesting that the locus of control can be transmitted across generations (see Morton 1997 for the results of an experiment and a literature review).…”

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confidence: 99%

Happiness, freedom and control

Verme

2009

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

207

114

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Abstract:How do people value freedom of choice? Drawing on economics and psychology the paper provides an hypothesis and empirical evidence on how individuals may value freedom of choice and derive utility from it. It is argued that the degree of perceived control that individuals have over choice -a construct known as the locus of control in psychology -regulates how we value freedom of choice. People who believe that the outcome of their actions depends on internal factors such as effort and skills (the 'internals') have a greater appreciation of freedom of choice than people who believe that the outcome of their actions depends on external factors such as fate or destiny (the 'externals'). We find some evidence in support of this hypothesis using a combination of all rounds of the World and European Values Surveys. A variable that measures freedom of choice and the locus of control is found to predict life satisfaction better than any other known factor such as health, employment, income, marriage or religion, across countries and within countries.We show that this variable is not a proxy of happiness and measures well both freedom of choice and the locus of control. 'Internals' are found to appreciate freedom of choice more than 'externals' and to be happier. These findings have important implications for individual utility, social welfare and public policies.

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“…Market development may undermine some forms of control while creating or reinforcing others. There is a large Marxist, and non-Marxist, literature on these issues (45,56) to which space constraints make it impossible to do justice.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development, social norms, and assignment to task

Fafchamps

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Economic development involves a structural transformation in the way people are allocated to tasks. There is a shift from self-provision to market exchange, facilitating specialization. There is also a shift from self-employment to wage employment in large firms and organizations, driven by innovation and increasing returns to scale. Changes in allocation mechanisms require changes in norms and attitudes. Because different labor assignment domains coexist, conflicts arise among norms that apply to different domains, possibly resulting in dysfunctional outcomes. I argue that religion, humanism, and schools have all played an important historical role in fostering the changes in social norms and attitudes that are needed to accompany structural changes in the way economies allocate workers to tasks.

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Incentive-Enhancing Preferences: Personality, Behavior, and Earnings

Cited by 261 publications

References 2 publications

Unemployment duration and personality

Unemployment duration and personality

Happiness, freedom and control

Development, social norms, and assignment to task

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