Why Do Dancers Smoke? Time Preference, Occupational Choice, and Wage Growth

Abstract

, for many helpful comments and suggestions. We are indebted to Rachel Singal and Jaime Rosenfeld for collecting and analyzing the survey data. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Job Search and Impatience

“…The main results is that hyperbolic agents devote little effort to search activities, and possibly less than they wish. This prediction matches the anecdotal advice of job counselors 2 to devote 1 Munasinghe and Sicherman (2000) find that workers with higher measured impatience select jobs with flatter wage profiles.…”

Social isolation and inequality

“…In Column 1, the first, simple regression of log wages on participation in athletics, age, region of current residence and urban/rural status of high school indicates that participation in high school athletics is associated with a 27% adult wage premium. 8 Adding controls for race and ethnicity in Column 2 leaves the estimated athlete wage premium essentially unchanged. Controlling for family characteristics including parents' education and occupation status, and number of siblings in Column 3, the coefficient on participation in athletics is reduced to 21%.…”

“…Indeed, only these younger men were asked, in 1980, questions about certain negative activities such as skipping school and underage drinking. 8 Baron et al [1], using the NLSY estimate a conditional athletics premium ranging from statistical zero (in a two-stage least-squares estimation) to 29%, depending on the conditioning factors. 9 One might worry that the higher wage for athletes is driven by a few professional athletes.…”

“…11 Fuchs [5] shows that the rate of time preference, measured by answers to questions about hypothetical choices between a sum of money now and a larger sum at a specific point in the future, is positively correlated with smoking. Munasinghe and Sicherman [8] and Della Vigna and Paserman [3] also use some of these measures as proxies for impatience. 12 The AFQT is a vocational aptitude test.…”

Discount rates and risky sexual behaviors among teenagers and young adults

“…Several studies suggest a link between higher discount rates and risky health behaviors, such as smoking Munasinghe and Sicherman, 2000;Viscusi and Hersch, 2001), reduced willingness to receive a flu vaccine (Chapman and Coups, 1999), reduced participation in cancer screening (Picone et al, 2004), heroin and cocaine abuse (Kirby and Petry, 2004), and being obese (Komlos et al, 2004). However, these associations are often weak, and studies of the role of time preference in health-related decision making have yielded mixed results (Fuchs, 1982;Chapman, 2002Chapman, , 2005.…”