Recent theories endogenize the attitude endowments of individuals, assuming that they are shaped by the attitudes of parents and other role models. This paper tests empirically for the relevance of three aspects of the attitude transmission process highlighted in this theoretical literature: (1)...

We analyse life-cycle saving decisions when households use simple heuristics, or rules of thumb, rather than solve the underlying intertemporal optimisation problem. We simulate life-cycle saving decisions using three simple rules and compute utility losses relative to the solution of the...

This paper examines whether electoral motives and government ideology influence short-term economic performance. I employ data on annual GDP growth in 21 OECD countries over the 1951-2006 period and provide a battery of empirical tests. In countries with two-party systems GDP growth is boosted...

We present evidence from a laboratory experiment showing that individuals who believe they were treated unfairly in an interaction with another person are more likely to cheat in a subsequent unrelated game. Specifically, subjects first participated in a dictator game. They then flipped a coin...

Bidding challenges learning theories. Even with the same bid, experiences vary stochastically: the same choice can result in either a gain or a loss. In such an environment, the question arises of how the nearly universally documented phenomenon of loss aversion affects the adaptive dynamics. We...

We use estimates of the effect of educational achievement-measured by international student achievement tests-on economic growth to simulate the impact of improved achievement for individual EU countries and the EU as a whole. We calculate the present value of improvements in GDP over the life...

Teachers differ greatly in how much they teach their students, but little is known about which teacher attributes account for this. We estimate the causal effect of teacher subject knowledge on student achievement using within-teacher within-student variation, exploiting a unique Peruvian...

Lifelong learning is often promoted in aging societies, but little is known about its returns or governments’ ability to advance it. This paper evaluates the effects of a large-scale randomized field experiment issuing vouchers for adult education in Switzerland. We find no significant average...