Patience, Risk-Taking, and Human Capital Investment Across Countries
结合PISA测试与全球偏好调查数据，发现耐心（正向）和冒险倾向（负向）共同解释了国家间学生技能差异的三分之二，并通过移民学生分析验证了偏好对人力资本的影响。
Abstract Patience and risk-taking—two preference components that steer intertemporal decision-making—are fundamental to human capital investment decisions. To understand how they contribute to international skill differences, we combine Programme for International Student Assessment 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 skills. In an identification strategy addressing unobserved residence country features, we find similar results when assigning migrant students their country-of-origin preferences in models with residence country fixed effects. Associations of national preferences with family and school inputs suggest that both may act as channels.