People gain utility from occupying a higher ranked position in the income distribution of the reference group. This paper investigates whether these gains depend on an individual's set of non-cognitive skills. Using the 2000-2008 waves of the German Socioeconomic Panel dataset (SOEP), a...

We describe gender and socioeconomic inequalities in the Big Five personality traits over the life cycle, using a facet-level inventory linked to administrative data. We estimate life-cycle profiles non-parametrically and test for cohort and sample-selection effects. We discuss the economic...

There are pronounced racial, ethnic, and gender gaps in income in the U.S. We investigate whether these correspond with differences in competitiveness, risk tolerance, and confidence relative to performance in a large, stratified sample of the U.S. prime-age population. We find substantial...

Goals are an important source of motivation. But little is known about why and how people set them. We address these questions in a model based on two stylized facts from psychology and behavioral economics: i) Goals serve as reference points for performance. ii) Present-biased preferences...

This paper demonstrates gender differences in risk aversion and ambiguity aversion. It also contributes to a growing literature relating economic preference parameters to psychological measures by asking whether variations in preference parameters among persons, and in particular across genders,...

Recent research on the economics of human development deepens understanding of the origins of inequality and excellence. It draws on and contributes to personality psychology and the psychology of human development. Inequalities in family environments and investments in children are substantial....

We study a psychologically based foundation for choice errors. The decision maker applies a preference ranking after forming a 'consideration set' prior to choosing an alternative. Membership of the consideration set is determined both by the alternative specific salience and by the rationality...

This paper reviews the problems and potential benefits of integrating personality psychology into economics. Economists have much to learn from and contribute to personality psychology. -- personality psychology ; behavioral economics ; identification ; causality