Culture and Student Achievement: The Intertwined Roles of Patience and Risk-Taking

Eric Hanushek, Lavinia Kinne (), Philipp Lergetporer and Ludger Woessmann
Additional contact information
Lavinia Kinne: DIW Berlin

No 13453, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Patience and risk-taking – two cultural traits that steer intertemporal decision-making – are fundamental to human capital investment decisions. To understand how they contribute to international differences in student achievement, we combine PISA tests with the Global Preference Survey. We find that opposing effects of patience (positive) and risk-taking (negative) together account for two-thirds of the cross-country variation in student achievement. In an identification strategy addressing unobserved residence-country features, we find similar results when assigning migrant students their country-of-origin cultural traits in models with residence-country fixed effects. Associations of culture with family and school inputs suggest that both may act as channels.

Keywords: intertemporal decision-making; preferences; risk-taking; patience; culture; international student achievement; PISA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published as 'Patience, Risk-Taking, and Human Capital Investment across Countries' in: Economic Journal, 2022, 132 (646), 2290-2307

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Related works:
Working Paper: Culture and Student Achievement: The Intertwined Roles of Patience and Risk-Taking (2020)
Working Paper: Culture and Student Achievement: The Intertwined Roles of Patience and Risk-Taking (2020)
Working Paper: Culture and Student Achievement: The Intertwined Roles of Patience and Risk-Taking (2020)
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