TIME PREFERENCES ACROSS LANGUAGE GROUPS: EVIDENCE ON INTERTEMPORAL CHOICES FROM THE SWISS LANGUAGE BORDER

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Herz, Holger; Huber, Martin; Maillard-Bjedov, Tjasa; Tyahlo, Svitlana
• 署名单位: University of Fribourg
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1093/ej/ueab025
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 2920-2954
• 关键词: risk; culture; impatience; diversity; inference; selection; BEHAVIOR; spirit

摘要

Differences in patience across language groups have recently received increased attention in the literature. We provide evidence on this issue by measuring time preferences of French and German speakers from a bilingual municipality in Switzerland where institutions are shared and socio-economic conditions are very similar across the two language groups. We find that French speakers are significantly more impatient than German speakers, and differences are particularly pronounced when payments in the present are involved. Estimates of preference parameters of a quasi-hyperbolic discounting model suggest significant differences in both present bias (beta) and the long-run discount factor (delta) across language groups.