The Economics and Psychology of Personality Traits

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE ECONOMICS AND PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY TRAITS Lex Borghans Angela Lee Duckworth James J. Heckman Bas ter Weel Working Paper 13810 http://www.nber.org/papers/w13810 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Duckworth's work is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Heckman's work Cambridge, MA 02138 is supported by NIH R01-HD043411, and grants from the American Bar Foundation, The Pew Charitable February 2008 Trusts, and the Partnership for America's Economic Success, and the J.B. Pritzker Consortium on Early Childhood Development. Ter Weel's work was supported by a research grant of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (grant 014-43-711). Chris Hsee gave us very useful advice at an early stage. We are grateful to Arianna Zanolini for helpful comments and research assistance. We have received very helpful comments on various versions of this draft from Gary Becker, Dan Benjamin, Dan Black, Ken Bollen, Sam Bowles, Frances Campbell, Flavio Cunha, John Dagsvik, Michael Daly, Kevin Denny, Liam Delany, Thomas Dohmen, Greg Duncan, Armin Falk, James Flynn, Linda Gottfredson, Lars Hansen, Joop Hartog, Moshe Hoffman, Bob Hogan, Nathan Kuncel, John List, Lena Malofeeva, Kenneth McKenzie, Kevin Murphy, Frank Norman, David Olds, Friedhelm Pfeiffer, Bernard Van Praag, Elizabeth Pungello, Howard Rachlin, C. Cybele Raver, Bill Revelle, Brent Roberts, Carol Ryff, Larry Schweinhart, Jesse Shapiro, Rebecca Shiner, Burt Singer, Richard Suzman, Harald Uhlig, Sergio Urzua, Gert Wagner, Herb Walberg, and participants in workshops at the University of Chicago (Applications Workshop), Iowa State University, Brown University, University College Dublin, and Washington State University. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily of the funders or commenters listed here. A website, http://jenni.uchicago.edu/econ-psych-traits/, presents supplemental tables. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2008 by Lex Borghans, Angela Lee Duckworth, James J. Heckman, and Bas ter Weel. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source.