Economics: Research Guide

This paper reviews a number of previous studies that have investigated how measure of non-cognitive skills predict important life outcomes such as educational attainment, employment, earnings, and self-reported health and life satisfaction. All reviewed studies analyse data from large-scale surveys from multiple countries and rely on the Big-Five framework to assess non-cognitive skills. The paper finds that measures of non-cognitive skills are robustly and consistently associated to indicators of life success in youth and adulthood, and have incremental predictive power over traditional measures of cognitive ability.

We investigate the relationship between child socio-emotional skills and labour market outcomes using longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study. We perform a novel factor analysis of child skills and capture four latent dimensions, representing ‘attention’, ‘conduct’, ‘emotional’, and ‘peers’ problems. Conditional on a range of confounding variables, we ï¬ nd that conduct problems, driven by aggression and impulsivity, are associated with positive outcomes in the labour market: higher wages, higher labour supply, sorting into ‘good’ jobs and higher productivity conditional on job tasks. Attention problems are inste..

The increased prevalence of human-AI collaboration is reshaping the manufacturing sector, fundamentally changing the nature of human work and training needs. While high automation improves performance when functioning correctly, it can lead to problematic human performance (e.g., defect detection accuracy, response time) when operators are required to intervene and assume manual control of decision-making responsibilities. As AI capability reaches higher levels of automation and human-AI collaboration becomes ubiquitous, addressing these performance issues is crucial. Proper worker training, focusing on skill-based, cognitive, and affective outcomes, and nurturing motivation and engagement, ..

Genetic factors play a major role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Observable genetic factors could impact household planning and medical care if they contain actionable information, meaning that they i) are associated with significant harms, ii) reflect risks for which individuals are not already prepared, and iii) are informative above and beyond current knowledge or expectations. We examine these properties for existing genetic measures related to ADRD in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We replicate existing relationships between genetic factors and cognitive health. We also show that higher genetic risk is associated with worse economic out..

This article analyzes implications of privacy regulation on stability of tacit collusion. It shows that privacy regulation is likely to hurt consumers' economic benefits, through its competition dampening effect. A more effective broad scope privacy regulation makes collusion more likely to be stable, regardless of the level of consumers' cognitive ability. Whereas, if the scope of privacy regulation is narrow, (a) its effectiveness positively (does not) affect collusion stability under limited (unlimited) cognitive ability of consumers and (b) the likelihood of collusion stability is decreasing in the level of consumers' cognitive ability. Our insights are relevant for designing privacy reg..

This paper investigates how the type of home environment – family foster care or residential care – affects the adult outcomes of individuals who were raised in state care during adolescence. While it is established in the literature that living in residential care is detrimental for babies, the effect of living in different types of care as an older child is underexplored. We use Hungarian individual-level administrative panel data and follow the children from age 13 until age 19. We show that the adult outcomes of adolescents who grew up in a foster family are substantially better even after controlling for a rich set of variables, including indicators of cognitive and non-cognitive sk..

While there is an established positive relationship between self-control and education, the direction of causality remains a matter of debate. We make a contribution to resolving this issue by exploiting a series of Australian and German educational reforms that increased minimum education requirements as a source of exogenous variation in education levels. Instrumental variables estimates suggest that, for people affected by the reforms, an additional year of schooling has no effect on self-control.

The ability to visualize things differs from person to person. For example, some people can remember the face of the first person they meet, while others cannot. Others think linguistically, as typified by self-talk. In other words, there are differences in the cognitive abilities of individuals. In this paper, we analyze how differences in cognitive ability affect the degree of achievement in work and the degree to which one is good at or bad at learning subjects. Specifically, we ask respondents about their ways of thinking in a questionnaire survey, and index the spatial, imagery, and verbal abilities of each respondent. We then analyzed the relationship between the abilities used in the ..

This paper examines to what degree organizations use strategies that focus on maximizing shareholder value (Theory E) or if they use strategies emphasizing the development of organizational capability (Theory O). Applying a cognitive perspective in strategic choice, our main goal was to investigate to what extent cognitive biases influenced strategic choices. A survey was developed that measured different aspects of the cognitive perspective in strategic choice. It was distributed to managers of several medium-sized organizations in Scandinavia (n = 119). The results indicated that managers used mixed strategies (Theory E and O) contrary to recommendations. Results also revealed that illusio..

Directed cognitive influence consists, particularly in the field of cognitive warfare, of altering, modifying, or preventing the autonomous development of a human target's thoughts. These interventions can have lasting, even permanent, consequences on the targeted people. Several methods are used, some of which relate to psychology or medicine, which obviously raises the problem of the ethics of such practices in an illegal exercise of protected professions.

Cognitive Warfare is defined in different ways, and the main approaches concern social phenomena, largely collective and shared communication, and orient attention on target groups or societies. However, based on information physics technologies and artificial intelligence, the targeting aspect of cognitive warfare differs in that it focuses on the cognitive skills of the victims' brains, whose functioning is altered in this way.

We study the developmental roots of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine pre-registered hypotheses about which of three fundamental pillars of human cooperation – direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and third-party punishment – emerges earliest and is more effective as a means to increase cooperation in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma game. We find that already children aged 3 act in a conditionally cooperative way. Yet, direct and indirect reciprocity do not increase overall cooperation rates beyond a control condition. Compared to the latter, punishment more than doubles cooperation rates, making it the mos..

This paper analyzes the association between an individual's mathematical skills in ninth grade, the subsequent selection process in firm-based apprenticeship training, and post-training skilled worker wages. Using data from the National Educational Panel Study and the Institute for Employment Research, we show that math skills are associated with training placements in larger and higher-paying firms, as well as higher subsequent skilled worker wages. Furthermore, we apply instrumental variables regression to account for measurement error in standardized math test scores. We find that a one-standard deviation increase in math skills is initially associated with a 36% increase in initial post-..

We invite experiment participants to invest their endowment in a pyramid scheme with a negative expected return. More than half of the participants invest regardless of their age, gender, education, income, and trust and fairness beliefs. Four interventions probe instruction tools that may deter pyramid investments. Exposure to possible payoff distributions or making payoff calculations diminishes investment rates, whereas seeing example pyramid outcomes or being exposed to a smaller pyramid scheme has no effect. Higher risk tolerance, preference for positively-skewed risk, and lower cognitive skills positively correlate with investment but explain a relatively small portion of investments.

We study multidimensional signaling (cognitive/non-cognitive) as a sender's portfolio choice with a resource constraint. We establish the existence of a unique monotone D1 equilibrium where the cognitive (non-cognitive) signal increases (decreases) in sender type and the sum of the two increases in sender type. The equilibrium is characterized by two threshold sender types. The low threshold is one where a kink occurs in signaling. The constraint is binding only for sender types above it. The high threshold is the other one, above which all types spend all the resources in cognitive signal with pooling and discontinuity on the top.

Economists modeled self-control problems in decisions of people with the time-inconsistence preferences model. They argued that the source of self-control problems could be uncertainty and temptation. This paper uses an experimental test offered to individuals instantaneous reward and future rewards to measure awareness of self-control problems in a tempting condition and also measure the effect of commitment and flexibility cost on their welfare. The quasi-hyperbolic discounting model with time discount factor and present bias at the same time was used for making a model for measuring awareness and choice reversal conditions. The test showed 66% awareness of self-control (partially naive be..

The complexities of geopolitical events, financial and fiscal crises, and the ebb and flow of personal life circumstances can weigh heavily on individuals’ minds as they make critical economic decisions. To investigate the impact of cognitive load on such decisions, we conducted an incentivized online experiment involving a representative sample of 2, 000 French households. The results revealed that ex-posure to a taxing and persistent cognitive load significantly reduced consumption, particularly for individuals under the threat of furlough, while simultaneously in-creasing their account balances, particularly for those not facing such employment uncertainty. These effects were not driven..

Using administrative tax and military records, we show that cognitive ability is more strongly associated with capital income than with labor income. This result holds across intensive and extensive margins, across different income types, and after controlling for education, occupation, inheritance, and parental background. Higher ability individuals save more, are better at selecting high-return stocks, hold more risky assets, and are less likely to live hand-to-mouth. Capital market returns are higher for cognitive ability than for non-cognitive skills, and the difference is stable over time. Rising capital shares, fueled by technological progress, could therefore exacerbate cognitive abil..

Working memory capacity is a key component of executive functioning and is thought to play an important role for a wide range of cognitive and noncognitive skills such as fluid intelligence, math, reading, the inhibition of pre-potent impulses or more general self-regulation abilities. Because these abilities substantially affect individuals’ life trajectories in terms of health, education, and earnings, the question of whether working memory (WM) training can improve them is of considerable importance. However, whether WM training leads to spillover effects on these other skills is contested. Here, we examine the causal impact of WM training embedded in regular school teaching by a random..

This study explores the impact of spiritual intelligence (SI) on technostress, with a focus on the mediating role of the ethical environment. In an era where technological advancements continually reshape our work and personal lives, understanding the interplay between human intelligence, well-being, and ethics within organizations is increasingly significant. Spiritual intelligence, transcending traditional cognitive and emotional intelligences, emphasizes understanding personal meaning and values. This paper investigates how higher levels of SI enable individuals to integrate technology into their lives without undue stress, and how a robust ethical environment within organizations support..

To support the expansion of universal early childcare programs, policymakers often refer to the positive outcomes documented in the literature. In reality, the evidence is mixed. In addition, most evidence is based on the impacts of enrolment in childcare for children aged 3-to-5-year-old. This research focuses on the intensity of childcare, measured in hours per week, for children under the age of 3. This area has received very little attention in the literature despite recent policy focus, specifically in the UK, on the number of hours of childcare which should be subsidised. We use data from a large, nationally representative English birth cohort, the Millennium Cohort Study, and an instr..

We study the influence of cognitive abilities, in particular reaction time, trader intuition (Theory of Mind), and cognitive reflection abilities, on human participants’ individual earnings when competing alongside algorithmic traders in continuous double auctions. In balanced markets, where each human trader has an algorithmic trader clone with the same valuations or costs, faster human reaction time significantly improves trading performance, while Theory of Mind can be detrimental to human trading performance, particularly for sellers. For unbalanced markets with humans and algorithmic traders on opposite sides of the market, the effects of cognitive abilities depend on trader role..

While there is an established positive relationship between self-control and education, the direction of causality remains a matter of debate. We make a contribution to resolving this issue by exploiting a series of Australian and German educational reforms that increased minimum education requirements as a source of exogenous variation in education levels. Instrumental variables estimates suggest that, for people affected by the reforms, an additional year of schooling has no effect on self-control.

We repeatedly elicit beliefs about the returns to study effort, in a large university course. A behavioral model of quasi-hyperbolic discounting and malleable beliefs predicts that the dynamics of beliefs mirrors the importance of exerting self-control, such that believed returns increase as the exam approaches, and drop post-exam. Exploiting variation in exam timing to control for common information shocks, we find this prediction confirmed: average believed study returns increase by about 20% over the period before the exam, and drop by about the same afterwards. Additional analyses further support the hypothesized mechanism that beliefs serve as a means of self-control.

Children and adolescents spend more than one-third of their time sleeping. Yet, we know little about the causal impact of sleeping on their development. This paper is the first to exploit variation in local daily daylight duration measured on pre-determined diary dates across the same individuals through time as an instrument in an individual fixed effects regression model to draw causal estimates of sleep duration on a comprehensive set of child development indicators. Applying this model to about 50 thousand time use diaries from two cohorts of Australian children spanning over 16 years, we first document that children sleep substantially less on days with longer daylight duration. Our res..

" Objective - The present study investigates the impact of augmented reality (AR) on the learning abilities of primary and secondary students at the cognitive and affective levels. Methodology/Technique - The data of 59 relevant domestic and international studies between 2010 and 2021, including 83 studies and 4123 samples, were analyzed through CMA for meta-analysis. Finding - The overall effect size of AR technology on the teaching effectiveness of primary and secondary school students was 0.598, which had a positive contribution. The impact of AR technology on primary and secondary school students was stronger at the affective levels than at the cognitive levels. Novelty - In the process ..

In job ads, employers express demand for personality traits when seeking workers to perform tasks that can be completed with different behaviors (e.g., communication, problem-solving) but not when seeking workers to perform tasks involving narrowly prescribed sets of behaviors such as routine and mathematics tasks. For many tasks, employers appear to demand narrower personality traits than those measured at the Big Five factor level. The job ads also exhibit substantial heterogeneity within occupations in the tasks mentioned. Workers may thus sort based on personality-derived comparative advantages in tasks into jobs rather than occupations. In the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997,..

What can employers learn from personality tests when applicants have incentives to misrepresent themselves? Using a within-subject, laboratory experiment, we compare personality measures with and without incentives for misrepresentation. Incentivized personality measures are weakly to moderately correlated with non-incentivized measures in all treatments. When test-takers are given a job ad indicating that an extrovert (introvert) is desired, extroversion measures are positively (negatively) correlated with IQ. Among other characteristics, only locus of control appears related to faking on personality measures. Our findings highlight the identification challenges in measuring personality and..

We measure firms’ demands for personality traits from job ads and assess how these demands relate to the incentives firms offer. The demand measures produce intuitive rankings of occupations in terms of personality requirements and, at the occupation-level, are positively correlated with the traits of workers in those occupations for all traits except emotional stability. Employers primarily demand workers who are extroverted, conscientious, and open-to-experience. Firms seeking conscientious workers are less likely to offer incentive pay and promotion opportunities, which suggests that personality demands interact with the optimal design of pay if conscientious workers require fewer incen..

This study explores the role of trait self-control in individuals’ changes in performance and well-being when working from home (WFH). In a three-wave longitudinal study with UK workers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that low self-control workers experienced a significant positive adjustment to WFH over time: The number of reported work distractions decreased, and self-assessed performance increased over the period of four months. In contrast, high self-control individuals did not show a similar upward trajectory. Despite the positive adjustment of low self-control individuals over time, on average, self-control was still positively associated with performance and negativel..