The Intergenerational Transmission of Risk and Trust Attitudes

49 Pages Posted: 31 Oct 2006

See all articles by Thomas J. Dohmen

Thomas J. Dohmen

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Maastricht University - Business Investment Research Center (BIRC)

Armin Falk

University of Bonn - Economic Science Area; briq - Institute on Behavior & Inequality

David Huffman

IZA Institute of Labor Economics; Swarthmore College

Uwe Sunde

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: May 2008

Abstract

Recent theoretical contributions depart from the usual practice of treating individual attitude endowments as a black box, by assuming that these are shaped by the attitudes of parents and other role models. Attitudes include fundamental preferences such as risk preference, and crucial beliefs about the world, such as trust. This paper provides evidence on the three main mechanisms for attitude transmission highlighted in the theoretical literature: (1) transmission of attitudes from parents to children; (2) positive assortative mating of parents, which tends to reinforce the impact of parents on the child; (3) an impact of prevailing attitudes in the local environment. Investigating these mechanisms is important because they are crucial assumptions underlying a large literature. It also sheds light on the basic question of where individual attitude endowments come from, and the factors that determine these drivers of economic behavior. The findings are supportive of attitude transmission models, and indicate that all three mechanisms play a role in shaping economically relevant attitudes.

Keywords: risk preferences, trust, intergenerational transmission, cultural transmission, assortative mating, social mobility, SOEP

JEL Classification: D1, D8, J12, J13, J62, Z13

Suggested Citation

Dohmen, Thomas and Falk, Armin and Huffman, David and Sunde, Uwe, The Intergenerational Transmission of Risk and Trust Attitudes (May 2008). IZA Discussion Paper No. 2380, CESifo Working Paper Series No. 2307, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=941116 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.941116

Thomas Dohmen

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Maastricht University - Business Investment Research Center (BIRC) ( email )

P.O. Box 616
Maastricht, 6200 MD
Netherlands
+31-43-388 3832 (Phone)
+31-43-388 4856 (Fax)

Armin Falk (Contact Author)

University of Bonn - Economic Science Area ( email )

briq - Institute on Behavior & Inequality

Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 5-9
Bonn, 53113
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.briq-institute.org/

David Huffman

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Swarthmore College

500 College Ave
Swarthmore, PA 19081
United States

Uwe Sunde

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) ( email )

Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
Munich, DE Bavaria 80539
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
404
Abstract Views
2,219
Rank
128,624
PlumX Metrics