The Global Variation in Risk and Time Preferences

Anke Becker, Christina Borner, Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David B. Huffman and Uwe Sunde

No 12589, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: A growing body of empirical research has developed measures of economic preferences related to risk taking and intertemporal choice. This research has documented pronounced heterogeneity in preferences across and within societies, and also provided evidence that these differences are culturally transmitted. This chapter discusses existing data sets that allow for a comparable measurement across the globe, takes stock of commonalities and differences in approaches, and presents an extended synthetic cross-country data set that combines information from existing data sets. The analysis then establishes various empirical regularities, such as broadly similar patterns of heterogeneity across the globe, revealed by the different datasets, but also some systematic divergences by measurement approach, and substantial correlations of economic preferences with country-aggregate and individual-level outcomes and traits. We also briefly discuss international data sets measuring social preferences, and end with an outlook on avenues for future research.

Keywords: willingness to take risks; patience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp12589.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ces:ceswps:_12589

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().