Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences

Anke Becker, Benjamin Enke and Armin Falk

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2020, vol. 110, 319-23

Abstract: This paper shows that contemporary population-level heterogeneity in risk aversion, time preference, altruism, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and trust partly traces back to the structure of the migration patterns of our very early ancestors. To document this pattern, we link differences in preferences between populations to the length of time elapsed since the ancestors of the respective groups broke apart from each other, as proxied by genetic and linguistic distance measures. Preference differences are significantly increasing in ancestral distance in both cross-country regressions and within-country analyses across groups of migrants.

JEL-codes: D64 D81 D91 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences (2020)
Working Paper: Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences (2018)
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DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20201071

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