|
on Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty |
| By: | Kaiser, Caspar F. (Warwick Business School); Lepinteur, Anthony (University of Luxembourg) |
| Abstract: | Economists routinely use survey measures of, for example, risk preferences, trust, political attitudes, or wellbeing. The literature generally treats numerical response categories as if they represent equal psychological intervals. We provide the first systematic test of this assumption, developing a general framework to quantify how easily results can be overturned when this linearity assumption is relaxed. Using original experimental data, we show that respondents interpret survey scales in ways that do deviate from linearity, but only mildly. Focusing on wellbeing research, we then replicate 30, 000+ coefficient estimates across more than 80 papers published in top economics journals. Replicated coefficient signs are remarkably robust to mild departures from linear scale-use. However, statistical inference and estimates of relative effect magnitudes become unreliable, even under modest departures from linearity. This is especially problematic for policy applications. We show that these concerns generalise to many other widely used survey-based constructs. |
| Keywords: | life satisfaction, wellbeing, ordinal scales, Likert scales, survey methods |
| JEL: | I31 C18 C87 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18029 |
| By: | Chowdhury, Shyamal (Australian National University); Puente-Beccar, Manuela (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods); Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf); Schneider, Sebastian O. (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods); Sutter, Matthias (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods) |
| Abstract: | We investigate how strongly the local environment beyond the family can contribute to understanding the formation of children's economic preferences. Building on precise geolocation data for around 6.000 children, we use fixed effects, spatial autoregressive models and Kriging to capture the relation between the local environment and children's preferences. The spatial models explain a considerable part of so far unexplained variation in preferences. Moreover, the "spatial stability" of preferences exceeds the village level. Our results highlight the importance of the local environment for the formation of children's preferences, which we quantify to be as large as that of parental preferences. |
| Keywords: | prosociality, risk attitudes, patience, local environment, Kriging, spatial models, skill formation, experiments with children, Bangladesh |
| JEL: | D01 C21 C99 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18015 |
| By: | Avner Greif; Joel Mokyr; Guido Tabellini |
| Abstract: | Why did the industrial revolution occur in Europe and not in China, despite China being well ahead of Europe in terms of economic and technological achievements several centuries earlier? We revisit this long-standing question from a new perspective. We emphasize the importance of the different social organizations that diffused in these two parts of the world in the centuries that preceded the industrial revolution: kin-based organizations in China, vs corporations in Europe. We explain their cultural origins, and discuss how these different organizations shaped the evolution of legal systems, political institutions and human capital accumulation in these two parts of the world. Our main argument is that European corporations played a crucial role in the scientific and technological innovations that ultimately led to the industrial revolution. |
| Keywords: | industrial revolution, China, Europe, culture, institutions, organizations |
| JEL: | N00 P00 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12023 |
| By: | Cowell, Frank; Schokkaert, Erik; Tarroux, Benoît |
| Abstract: | This article introduces, and puts in context, the fourteen papers in the special issue, "Inequality perceptions and fairness judgments." |
| Keywords: | distributional preferences; survey; experiments |
| JEL: | N0 J1 |
| Date: | 2025–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:128925 |