nep-neu New Economics Papers
on Neuroeconomics
Issue of 2015‒06‒13
two papers chosen by



  1. Youth unemployment and the effect of personality traits By Silvia Mendolia; Ian Walker
  2. Is financial instability male-driven? Gender and cognitive skills in experimental asset markets By Carlos Cueva Herrero; Aldo Rustichini

  1. By: Silvia Mendolia; Ian Walker
    Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between personality traits in adolescence and education and labour market choices. In particular, we investigate the impact of locus of control, effort and diligence, and self-esteem, on the risk of youths being unemployed (sometimes referred to as NEET (“Not in Education, Employment or Trainingâ€). Thus, our focus is on early drop-out from both education and the labour market at age 18-20. We use matching methods to control for a rich set of adolescent and family characteristics by estimating the treatment effects of multiple personality traits at the same time (Woolridge, 2010). Finally, we use the methodology proposed by Altonji et al. (2005) that involves making hypotheses about the correlation between the unobservables and observables that determine the outcomes and the unobservables that influence personality. Our results show that individuals that display low effort and diligence, low self-esteem, and external locus of control are more likely to drop out of education and employment.
    Keywords: personality, youth unemployment, NEET, effot, locus of control, self-esteem
    JEL: I10 I21
    Date: 2015
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lan:wpaper:84097960&r=neu
  2. By: Carlos Cueva Herrero (Dpto. Análisis Económico Aplicado); Aldo Rustichini (University of Minnesota)
    Abstract: The hypothesis that price stability would reliably increase with the fraction of women operating in financial markets has been frequently suggested in policy discussions. To test this hypothesis we conducted 10 male-only, 10 female-only and 10 mixed-gender experimental asset markets, and compared the effects of gender composition, confidence, risk attitude and cognitive skills. Male and female markets have comparable volatility and deviations from fundamentals, whereas mixed-gender markets are substantially more stable. On the other hand, higher average cognitive skills of the group are associated with reduced market volatility. Individual-level analysis shows that subjects with higher cognitive skills trade more rationally and earn significantly higher profits; similarly, mixed markets exhibit more rational behavior, particularly for traders with lower cognitive skills. Our results are demonstrated to hold in other experimental asset market studies, suggesting that a mixed-gender composition reduces mispricing across different types of asset markets.
    Keywords: asset market experiment, mispricing, price bubbles, gender, cognitive ability
    JEL: C91 C92 G02 G11 J16
    Date: 2015–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2015-06&r=neu

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