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

Eric Hanushek, Lavinia Kinne, Philipp Lergetporer and Ludger Woessmann

No 8407, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

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: culture; patience; risk-taking; preferences; intertemporal decision-making; international student achievement; PISA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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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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