We provide the first empirical evidence on the direct link between locus of control and self-control, and how they interact in explaining a range of health outcomes. Using rich Australian survey data, we find that, while the two traits are distinct constructs, a greater internal locus of control...

We exploit admission cutoffs to secondary schools to study the effects of general academically oriented, versus vocational secondary schooling on cognitive and non-cognitive skills using a regression discontinuity design. We measure these skills using the Finnish Defence Forces Basic Skills Test...

An important role is ascribed to students' social networks in explaining both social and ethnic differentials in educational achievement and attainment. For example, students' social networks are assumed to influence their probability of success by providing educationally-relevant resources and...

Planning for retirement and subsequent execution of the plan are difficult, but essential for financial security in old age. To formally analyse the interplay between planning and self-control, I introduce cognitive costs of formulating a plan into the dual-self model of impulse control. The...

For many commentators the litmus test of integration is how well the children of migrants are faring. This report investigates whether children born in Ireland to migrant parents differ from children with Irish-born parents in terms of their English language development at three, five and nine...

The long-term unemployed sometimes lack basic soft skills needed to enter and succeed in the labor market. We examine whether it is possible to develop or enhance these skills among adults by using a large-scale randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of an Active Labor...

This empirical paper analyzes labor market sorting across establishments using Swedish register data on cognitive and non-cognitive abilities. We draw on the theoretical foundations of Chone' and Kramarz (2021), in which workers are endowed with sets of multidimensional skills that need to be...

We study the effects of increased opportunities for one-on-one time with a parent during infancy on the human capital formation of children. To this end, we exploit a nationwide reform that mandated Swedish municipalities to offer childcare access for infants' older siblings, while parents were...

This paper evaluates how Vietnam's Escuela Nueva (VNEN) program, an educational reform for primary schools supported by the World Bank, affected the cognitive (mathematics and Vietnamese) and non-cognitive (socioemotional) skills of students in that country. We use propensity score matching to...

This paper evaluates how Vietnam's Escuela Nueva (VNEN) program, an educational reform for primary schools supported by the World Bank, affected the cognitive (mathematics and Vietnamese) and non-cognitive (socioemotional) skills of students in that country. We use propensity score matching to...

It is now well accepted that human capital is a heterogeneous aggregate and that non-cognitive skills are at least as relevant as cognitive abilities. In spite of this growing interest in the labour market consequences of personality traits, the relationship between these and educational and...

We investigate the effects of a large-scale Norwegian reform that provided extra teachers to 166 lower secondary schools with relatively high student-teacher ratios and low average grades. We exploit these two margins using a regression discontinuity setup and find that the reform reduced the...

From the perspective of cognitive mechanisms, this research discusses the effects of cognitive flexibility, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and optimism on entrepreneurship competence. Qualitative interviews have revealed the general relationship between key concepts. SEM analysis further shows...

While most empirical studies document that cognitive and social skills are strong predictors of individual earnings, their impact is not homogenous in space. We argue that dense urban settings utilize cognitive and social skills more intensively than rural areas, therefore the labour market...

We investigate the effects of a large-scale Norwegian reform that provided extra teachers to 166 lower secondary schools with relatively high student-teacher ratios and low average grades. We exploit these two margins using a regression discontinuity setup and find that the reform reduced the...

Overconfidence is one of the most ubiquitous cognitive bias. There is copious evidence of overconfidence being relevant in a diverse set of economic domains. In this paper, we relate the recent concept of cognitive uncertainty with overconfidence. Cognitive uncertainty represents a decision...

We show that children who are born at or just before the weekend are less likely to be breastfed, owing to poorer breastfeeding support services in hospitals at weekends. We use this variation to estimate the effect of breastfeeding on children's development in the first five years of life, for...

A feature central to the success of e-commerce Web sites is the design of an effective interface to present product information. However, the suitability of the prevalent information formats in supporting various online shopping tasks is not known. Using the cognitive fit theory as the...

Using microdata from the 1994-6 International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), we examine the role of cognitive skills in explaining higher wage inequality in the US. We find that while the greater dispersion of cognitive test scores in the US plays a part in explaining higher US wage inequality,...

This paper presents new evidence from the NLSY on the importance of meritocracy in American society. In it, we find that general intelligence, or g -- a measure of cognitive ability--is dominant in explaining test score variance. The weights assigned to tests by g are similar for all major...

Does the U.S. labor market reward cognitive skill differences among high school dropouts, the members of the labor force with the least educational attainments? This paper reports the results of an exploration of this question, using a new data set that provides information on the universe of...

The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) technology exponentially increases the collection of new information types in consumers’ lives from various sensors. However, many consumers do not fully recognize the potential privacy and security risks (PSR) associated with IoT. Those who are aware...

We examine whether grit affects individuals' preferences and trading decisions. Grit is the sustained effort toward a goal despite setbacks. It is malleable and distinct from the Big Five personality traits. Using experiments formalized in prospect theory, we find that grit reduces loss...

Achievement gaps may reflect the cognitive impairment thought to occur in evaluative settings (e.g., classrooms) where a stereotyped identity is salient (i.e., stereotype threat). This study presents an economic model of stereotype threat that reconciles prior evidence on how student effort and...

This paper develops two methods for estimating the effect of schooling on achievement test scores that control for the endogeneity of schooling by postulating that both schooling and test scores are generated by a common unobserved latent ability. These methods are applied to data on schooling...

We establish the mediating role of mindful consumption in the relationship between mindfulness and life satisfaction by analyzing competing models for moderation (three models), moderated mediation (two models), and post-hoc analyses (three models) using Hayes' Process for Path Analysis. Gender,...

Nearly 60 percent of college students today are women. Using longitudinal data on a nationally representative cohort of eighth grade students in 1988, I examine two potential explanations for the differential attendance rates of men and women -- returns to schooling and non-cognitive skills. The...

The study intended to find out the level of cognitive attitude toward the environment such as anthropocentric and eco-centric attitude toward the environment and ecological behaviour of employees and find out its correlation between attitude toward the environment and ecological behaviour of...

We look beyond the traditional focus on the gender gap in schooling attainment by investigating how gender differences in cognitive achievement in mid-childhood and adolescence are associated with trajectories of deprivation, measured by undernutrition and poverty. This study uses longitudinal...

There is a wealth of research in psychology demonstrating that agents process information with the aid of categories. In this paper we study this phenomenon in two parts. First, we build a model of how experiences are sorted into categories and how categorization affects decision making. Second,...

Meta cognitive Ability impacts many determinants of individual performance including learning, motivation, critical thinking and decision making. Low Meta cognitive ability has been suggested as the cause of inaccurate self-assessment among poor performers. The study uncovers the links between...