Patience and the Wealth of Nations
According to standard dynamic choice theories, patience is a key driving factor behind the accumulation of the proximate determinants of economic development. Using a novel representative data-set on time preferences from 80,000 individuals in 76 countries, Thomas Dohmen and his co-researchers have investigated the empirical relevance of this hypothesis in the context of a development accounting framework. They find a significant reduced-form relationship between patience and development in terms of contemporary income as well as medium- and long-run growth rates, with patience explaining a substantial fraction of development differences across countries. Exploiting the Max-Weber hypothesis, according to which Protestantism is favourable for economic development, their data show that patience is strongly correlated with the share of Protestants in a given country.
Mr Dohmen's current research interests are in behavioural and experimental economics, applied micro-econometrics, life-cycle formation of cognitive & non-cognitive skills, psychology of incentives as well as personnel and organisational economics.
His articles have appeared in journals such as the American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Public Economics, European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Science, among others.
Thomas Dohmen is Professor of Applied Microeconomics at the University of Bonn and Professor of Education and the Labour Market at the School of Business and Economics of Maastricht University. He served as Director of the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) and was employed as a Research Associate at IZA. His Master's and Doctorate in Economics are from Maastricht University and he also holds an MSc in Economics from the University of Warwick. Mr Dohmen is a DIW Research Professor and an IZA Research Fellow.