Status
Revise and resubmit, Journal of Labor Economics.
Authors
Carlos César Chávez Padilla (first author), S. Feng, James J. Heckman, and Z. Yang.
Abstract
We study how cognitive skills and personality traits relate to economic preferences in a sample of Chinese children. Using a structural model with CRRA and Expo-Power utility specifications and sophisticated error structures, we separate preferences from deliberation quality. Cognitive ability primarily affects decision precision rather than underlying risk preferences, with implications for the interpretation of preference estimates from incentivized lottery tasks.