The Intergenerational Behavioural Consequences of a Socio-Political Upheaval

Alison Booth, Xin Meng (), Elliott Fan () and Dandan Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Dandan Zhang: Peking University

No 11991, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Social scientists have long been interested in the effects of social-political upheavals on a society subsequently. A priori, we would expect that, when traumas are brought about by outsiders, within-group behaviour would become more collaborative, as society unites against the common foe. Conversely, we would expect the reverse when the conflict is generated within-group. In our paper we are looking at this second form of upheaval, and our measure of within-group conflict is the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution (CR) that seriously disrupted many aspects of Chinese society. In particular, we explore how individuals' behavioural preferences are affected by within-group traumatic events experienced by their parents or grandparents. Using data from a laboratory experiment in conjunction with survey data, we find that individuals with parents or grandparents affected by the CR are less trusting, less trustworthy, and less likely to choose to compete than their counterparts whose predecessors were not direct victims of the CR.

Keywords: preferences; behavioural economics; cultural revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 N4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-his and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, 200, 931-958.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp11991.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Intergenerational Behavioural Consequences of a Socio-Political Upheaval (2019)
Working Paper: The Intergenerational Behavioural Consequences of a Socio-Political Upheaval (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11991

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().