Personality Traits Across the Life Cycle: Disentangling Age, Period and Cohort Effects*

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fitzenberger, Bernd; Mena, Gary; Nimczik, Jan; Sunde, Uwe
• 署名单位: University of Munich; University of Erlangen Nuremberg; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Humboldt University of Berlin; European School of Management & Technology; University of Munich; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1093/ej/ueab093
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 2141-2172
• 关键词: risk attitudes; span; STABILITY; preferences; propensity; PSYCHOLOGY; patterns; BEHAVIOR; trust; big-5

摘要

Economists increasingly recognise the importance of personality traits for socio-economic outcomes, but little is known about the stability of these traits over the life cycle. Existing empirical contributions typically focus on age patterns and disregard cohort and period influences. This paper contributes novel evidence for the separability of age, period and cohort effects for a broad range of personality traits based on systematic specification tests for disentangling age, period and cohort influences. Our estimates document that, for different cohorts, the evolution of personality traits across the life cycle follows a stable, though non-constant, age profile, while there are sizeable differences across time periods.