Anke Becker’s research while affiliated with Harvard University and other places

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Publications (2)


Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences
  • Article

May 2020

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42 Reads

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47 Citations

AEA Papers and Proceedings

Anke Becker

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Benjamin Enke

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This paper shows that contemporary population-level heterogeneity in risk aversion, time preference, altruism, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and trust partly traces back to the structure of the migration patterns of our very early ancestors. To document this pattern, we link differences in preferences between populations to the length of time elapsed since the ancestors of the respective groups broke apart from each other, as proxied by genetic and linguistic distance measures. Preference differences are significantly increasing in ancestral distance in both cross-country regressions and within-country analyses across groups of migrants.


Global Evidence on Economic Preferences*
  • Article
  • Full-text available

November 2018

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1,863 Reads

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1,309 Citations

Quarterly Journal of Economics

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Anke Becker

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[...]

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This article studies the global variation in economic preferences. For this purpose, we present the Global Preference Survey (GPS), an experimentally validated survey data set of time preference, risk preference, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust from 80,000 people in 76 countries. The data reveal substantial heterogeneity in preferences across countries, but even larger within-country heterogeneity. Across individuals, preferences vary with age, gender, and cognitive ability, yet these relationships appear partly country specific. At the country level, the data reveal correlations between preferences and biogeographic and cultural variables, such as agricultural suitability, language structure, and religion. Variation in preferences is also correlated with economic outcomes and behaviors.Within countries and subnational regions, preferences are linked to individual savings decisions, labormarket choices, and prosocial behaviors. Across countries, preferences vary with aggregate outcomes ranging from per capita income, to entrepreneurial activities, to the frequency of armed conflicts. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.

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Citations (2)


... Because such random drift occurs regularly over time in sufficiently large populations, genetic distance represents a molecular clock indicating the length of time that has elapsed since two populations became separated from a common ancestor. Longer periods of ancestral separation give rise to the divergence between human societies in intergenerationally transmitted traits, such as norms, values, preferences, attitudes, beliefs, languages, and religions (Becker et al. 2020;Spolaore & Wacziarg 2009, 2016b. 3 Hence, genetically distant countries tend to differ in cultures, ancestry, and historical characteristics due to long-run exposure to divergent historical trajectories. ...

Reference:

Barriers to the cross‐border diffusion of climate change policies
Ancient Origins of the Global Variation in Economic Preferences
  • Citing Article
  • May 2020

AEA Papers and Proceedings