Impatience among Preschool Children and their Mothers

Using experimental data of children and their mothers, this paper explores the intergenerational relationship of impatience. The child's impatience stems from a delay of gratification experiment. Mother's impatience has been assessed by a choice task where the mothers faced trade-offs between a smaller-sooner and a larger-later monetary reward with a delay of six or twelve months. The findings demonstrate an intergenerational relationship in short-run decision making. Controlling for mother's and child's characteristics the child's impatience at preschool age is significantly correlated with the six month maternal reservation interest rate.time preferences, impatience, intergenerational transmission, field experiments

Individual Heterogeneities, Social Environment and Life Outcomes

Individuals differ not only by gender and hair color, they also exhibit heterogeneities in various probably not fully genetically determined dimensions as personality, preferences and skills. Moreover, individuals live in different social environments and yield unequal life outcomes as health or income. Understanding how differences in these aspects affect each other is of relevance not only for behavioral sciences, but also for informing policy as it helps to uncover reasons for social mobility and to target intervention programs. In this regard, especially the understanding of malleability of individual heterogeneities and life outcomes in response to social environment is of great interest. In general, despite their fundamental importance, little is known about the interactions between the three aspects named in the title. This dissertation consists of five self-contained chapters which jointly seek to contribute to a better understanding of the interactions within the triangle of individual heterogeneities, social environment and life outcomes. To do so, Chapter 1 and 2 consider the relation between individual heterogeneities, as personality and preferences, and life outcomes, as income, health and education. Chapter 3 and 4 analyze the role of (early) social environment on the development process of personality and preferences. Finally, Chapter 5 considers the direct effect of social environment on life outcomes

Quasi-hyperbolic time preferences and their intergenerational transmission

This study explores the intergenerational transmission of time preferences and focuses on the question which specific aspects of mother’s time preference are related to her preschool child’s ability to delay gratification. We provide a new procedure for assessing the parameters of a “quasi-hyperbolic” discount function (Laibson, 1997) using two trade-off experiments. We apply the procedure to a sample of 213 mother-child pairs and show that especially mother’s beta parameter is related to her preschool child’s ability to delay gratification

Impatience among preschool children and their mothers

Using experimental data of children and their mothers, this paper explores the intergenerational relationship of impatience. The child’s impatience stems from a delay of gratification experiment. Mother’s impatience has been assessed by a choice task where the mothers faced trade-offs between a smaller-sooner and a larger-later monetary reward with a delay of six or twelve months. The findings demonstrate an intergenerational relationship in short-run decision making. Controlling for mother’s and child’s characteristics the child’s impatience at preschool age is significantly correlated with the six month maternal reservation interest rate

Early childhood environment, breastfeeding and the formation of preferences

This study provides insights on the role of early childhood family environment within the process of preference formation. We start by presenting evidence showing that breastfeeding duration is a valid measure of the quality of early childhood environment. In the main analysis, we then investigate how early childhood environment affects the formation of fundamental economic preferences such as time, risk, and social preferences. In a sample of preschool children we find that longer breastfeeding duration is associated with higher levels of patience and altruism as well as a lower willingness to take risk. Repeating the analysis on a sample of young adults indicates that the observed pattern is replicable and persists into adulthood. Importantly, in both data sets our findings are robust when controlling for cognitive ability and parental socio-economic status. We can further rule out that the results are purely driven by nutritional effects of breastfeeding. Altogether, our findings strongly suggest that early childhood environment as measured by breastfeeding duration systematically and persistently affects preference formation

On the interpretation of non-cognitive skills: What is being measured and why it matters

Across academic sub-fields such as labor, education, and behavioral economics, the measurement and interpretation of non-cognitive skills varies widely. As a result, it is difficult to compare results on the importance of non-cognitive skills across literatures. Drawing from these literatures, this paper systematically relates various prototypical non-cognitive measures within one data set. Specifically, we estimate and compare several different strategies for measuring non-cognitive skills. For each, we compare their relative effectiveness at predicting educational success and decompose what is being measured into underlying personality traits and economic preferences. We demonstrate that the construction of the non-cognitive factor greatly influences what is actually measured and what conclusions are reached about the role of non-cognitive skills in life outcomes such as educational attainment. Furthermore, we demonstrate that, while sometimes difficult to interpret, factors extracted from self-reported behaviors can have predictive power similar to well established taxonomies, such as the Big Five

On the Interpretation of Non-Cognitive Skills: What Is Being Measured and Why It Matters

Across academic sub-fields such as labor, education, and behavioral economics, the measurement and interpretation of non-cognitive skills varies widely. As a result, it is difficult to compare results on the importance of non-cognitive skills across literatures. Drawing from these literatures, this paper systematically relates various prototypical non-cognitive measures within one data set. Specifically, we estimate and compare several different strategies for measuring non-cognitive skills. For each, we compare their relative effectiveness at predicting educational success and decompose what is being measured into underlying personality traits and economic preferences. We demonstrate that the construction of the non-cognitive factor greatly influences what is actually measured and what conclusions are reached about the role of non-cognitive skills in life outcomes such as educational attainment. Furthermore, we demonstrate that, while sometimes difficult to interpret, factors extracted from self-reported behaviors can have predictive power similar to well established taxonomies, such as the Big Five

Prosociality predicts labor market success around the world

A large literature points to the importance of prosociality for the well-being of societies and individuals. However, most of this work is based on observations from western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies, questioning the generalizability of these findings. Here we present a global investigation of the relation between prosociality and labor market success. Our analysis uses experimentally validated measures of prosociality and is based on about 80,000 individuals in 76 representative country samples. We show a sizable and robust positive relation between prosociality and labor market success around the world that does not systematically differ across continents or by countries’ economic development. These findings generalize the positive relation between prosociality and labor market success to a wide geographical context

РОЗШИРЕННЯ СФЕР ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ТЕХНОЛОГІЇ СВЕРДЛОВИННОГО ГІДРОВИДОБУТКУ ДЛЯ РОЗРОБКИ ПОКЛАДІВ НЕТРАДИЦІЙНИХ ВУГЛЕВОДНІВ

Виходячи із розвіданих і прогнозних запасів, особливе значення для людства мають океанічні гідрати метану та природний бітум (2,1∙10 16 м 3 газу і 4,7 трлн барелів бітуму відповідно). Розробку газогідратних покладів можна здійснювати зниженням тиску нижче за рівноважний гідратоутворення, підвищенням температури, введенням інгібіторів або кар’єрним способом. На сьогодні через відсутність ефективної і конкурентоздатної технології промислова розробка покладів газових гідратів не ведеться

Mentoring and Schooling Decisions: Causal Evidence

Inequality of opportunity strikes when two children with the same academic performance are sent to different quality schools because their parents differ in socio-economic status. Based on a novel dataset for Germany, we demonstrate that children are significantly less likely to enter the academic track if they come from low socio-economic status (SES) families, even after conditioning on prior measures of school performance. We then provide causal evidence that a low-intensity mentoring program can improve long-run education outcomes of low SES children and reduce inequality of opportunity. Low SES children, who were randomly assigned to a mentor for one year are 20 percent more likely to enter a high track program. The mentoring relationship affects both parents and children and has positive long-term implications for children’s educational trajectories