Risk preferences across the life course
Bart Goldsteyn, SBE, Maastricht University
This paper investigates how risk attitudes change over the life course. We study the age trajectory of risk attitudes all the way from early adulthood until old age, in large representative panel data sets from the Netherlands and Germany. Age patterns are generally difficult to identify separately from cohort or calendar period effects. We achieve identification by replacing calendar period indicators with controls for the specific underlying factors that may change risk attitudes across periods. The main result is that willingness to take risks decreases over the life course, linearly until approximately age 65 after which the slope becomes flatter.
About the speaker
Bart Golsteyn (PhD, Maastricht University 2007) is senior assistant professor at the Department of Economics at Maastricht University. He is affiliated to the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA, Maastricht University), the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI, Stockholm University) and the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). His main research interests are in economic preference parameters (time and risk preferences) and economics of education. He published among others in Economic Journal (twice), Journal of the European Economic Association, and PLOS ONE.
Venue: UNU-MERIT, Boschstraat 24, room 2.24
Date: 19 November 2015
Time: 13:30 - 14:30 CEST
