We study the transmission of risk attititudes in a unique survey of mothers and children in which both participated in an incentivised risk preference elicitation task. We document that risk preferences are correlated between mothers and children when the children are just 7 to 8 years old. This...

We estimate the effect of education on lifetime income in Europe, by distinguishing between individuals who lived in rural or urban areas during childhood and between individuals who had access to many or few books at age ten. We instrument years of education using reforms of compulsory...

This study presents an evolutionary process of secularization that integrates a theoretical model, simulations, and an empirical estimation that employs data from 32 countries (included in the International Social Survey Program: Religion II - ISSP, 1998). Following Bisin and Verdier (2000,...

In the last few years, significant amount of research has produced evidence in support of the signaling, credential or "sheepskin" effects in rates of return to schooling for studies of the developed as well as developing countries. An example of the former is the seminal empirical work by...

Each worker belongs to either the majority or the minority group and, irrespective of the group she belongs to, can have good or bad work habits. These traits are transmitted from one generation to the next through a learning and imitation process which depends on parents' purposeful investment...

We study the intergenerational effects of maternal education on children's cognitive achievement, behavioral problems, grade repetition and obesity. We address endogeneity of maternal schooling by instrumenting with variation in schooling costs when the mother grew up. Using matched data from...

We employ a standard identification strategy from the peer effects literature to investigate the importance of network definitions in estimation of endogenous peer effects. We use detailed information on friends in the Adolescent Longitudinal Health Survey (Add Health) to construct two network...

This paper considers the potential for the cultural transmission of attitudes toward work, welfare, and individual responsibility to explain the intergenerational correlation in welfare receipt. Specifically, we investigate whether 18-year olds' views about social benefits and the drivers of...

Societies socialize children about many things, including sex. Socialization is costly. It uses scarce resources, such as time and effort. Parents weigh the marginal gains from socialization against its costs. Those at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale indoctrinate their daughters less...

Based on the cultural formation of continuous preferences framework of Pichler [16], this paper analyzes the evolution of preferences and behavior in a two cultural groups setting. We show that the qualitative dynamic properties depend crucially on what parents perceive as the optimal...