 IQ and national productivityfrom Palgrave Macmillan Abstract: A recent line of research in economics and psychology hypothesizes that differences in national average intelligence, proxied by IQ tests, are important drivers of national economic outcomes. Cross-country regressions, while showing a robust IQ-growth relationship, cannot fully test this hypothesis. Thus, recent work explores the micro-foundations of the IQ-productivity relationship. The well-identified psychological relationship between IQ and patience implies higher savings rates and higher folk theorem-driven institutional quality in high average IQ countries. Experiments indicate that intelligence predicts greater pro-social behavior in public goods and prisoner’s dilemma games, supporting the hypothesis that high national average IQ causes higher institutional quality. High average IQ countries also have higher savings intensity by a variety of measures. Other possible IQ-productivity channels are discussed, as are possible environmental causes of differences in national average IQ. Keywords: Cognitive ability; economic growth; education; human capital; time preference; institutions; cooperation; prisoner’s dilemma; IQ; intelligence; capital; strategic complementarities; intelligence quotient; IQ tests; GDP; average worker productivity; cognitive skill (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:dofeco:v:5:year:2011:doi:3866 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics from Palgrave Macmillan |
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