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Personality Traits Across the Life Cycle: Disentangling Age, Period, and Cohort Effects

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Listed:
  • Fitzenberger, Bernd

    (HU Berlin)

  • Mena, Gary

    (HU Berlin)

  • Nimczik, Jan

    (ESMT Berlin)

  • Sunde, Uwe

    (LMU Munich)

Abstract

Despite the importance for socio-economic outcomes, there is an ongoing debate about the stability of personality traits over the life cycle. By disentangling age, period and cohort influences on personality traits, this paper adds to the existing empirical contributions, which often focus on age patterns and disregard cohort and period influences. We present the results from systematic specification tests that provide novel evidence for the separability of age, period, and cohort effects in almost all personality traits. Our estimates also document that for different cohorts, the evolution of personality traits across the life-cycle follows a stable, though non-constant, age-profile, while there are sizeable differences across time periods.

Suggested Citation

  • Fitzenberger, Bernd & Mena, Gary & Nimczik, Jan & Sunde, Uwe, 2019. "Personality Traits Across the Life Cycle: Disentangling Age, Period, and Cohort Effects," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 214, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    • Handle: RePEc:rco:dpaper:214
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    Cited by:

    1. Andrew E Clark & Rong Zhu, 2024. "Taking Back Control? Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Retirement on Locus of Control," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(660), pages 1465-1493.
    2. Gast'on P. Fern'andez, 2023. "Does personality affect the allocation of resources within households?," Papers 2307.02918, arXiv.org.
    3. Haylock, Michael & Kampkötter, Patrick & Kosfeld, Michael & Von Siemens, Ferdinand, 2023. "Helping and Antisocial Behavior in the Workplace," CEPR Discussion Papers 18154, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Sunde, Uwe, 2023. "Age, longevity, and preferences," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    5. Kemper, Johanna & Renold, Ursula, 2024. "Evaluating the impact of general versus vocational education on labor market outcomes in Egypt by means of a regression discontinuity design," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    6. Sunde, Uwe & Kotschy, Rainer, 2022. "Does Demography Determine Democratic Attitudes?," CEPR Discussion Papers 17624, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Murray, Neil & Neyse, Levent & Schröder, Carsten, 2023. "Changes in risk attitudes vary across domains throughout the life course," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 534-563.
    8. McKercher, Bob, 2023. "Age or generation? Understanding behaviour differences," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    9. Md Tawhidul Islam & Kenta Tanaka & Koji Kotani, 2024. "Sharing information and threshold ambiguity in public bads prevention," Working Papers SDES-2024-3, Kochi University of Technology, School of Economics and Management, revised Jun 2024.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    big five personality traits; locus of control; risk attitudes; age-period-cohort decomposition; life cycle;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

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