Although both economists and psychologists seek to identify determinants of heterogeneity in behavior, they use different concepts to capture them. In this review we first analyze the extent to which economic preferences and psychological concepts of personality – such as the Big Five and...

Single-sex classes within coeducational environments are likely to modify students' risk-taking attitudes in economically important ways. To test this, we designed a controlled experiment using first year college students who made choices over real-stakes lotteries at two distinct dates....

Is the way that people make risky choices, or tradeoffs over time, related to cognitive ability? This paper investigates whether there is a link between cognitive ability, risk aversion, and impatience, using a representative sample of the population and incentive compatible measures. We conduct...

In this paper we utilise data from a unique new birth‐cohort study to see how the risk preferences of young people are affected by cognitive skills and gender. We find that cognitive ability (measured by the percentile ranking for university entrance at age 18) has no effect on risk...

This paper summarizes recent evidence on what achievement tests measure; how achievement tests relate to other measures of "cognitive ability" like IQ and grades; the important skills that achievement tests miss or mismeasure, and how much these skills matter in life. Achievement tests miss, or...

This paper reviews the recent literature on measuring and boosting cognitive and noncognitive skills. The literature establishes that achievement tests do not adequately capture character skills – personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labor market, in...

Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky...

This paper reviews the recent literature on measuring and boosting cognitive and non-cognitive skills. The literature establishes that achievement tests do not adequately capture character skills: personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labor market, in...

We study the causal impact of network centrality on educational outcomes using field experiments in primary schools in Bangladesh. After obtaining information on friendship networks, we randomly allocate students into groups and give them individual and group assignments. We find that groups...

This paper investigates whether education and working in a physically demanding job causally impact temporary work incapacity, i.e. sickness absence, and permanent work incapacity, i.e. the inflow to disability via sickness absence. Our contribution is to allow endogeneity of both education and...