The Agricultural Origins of Time Preference / Oded Galor, Ömer Özak.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Galor, Oded.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Özak, Ömer.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w20438.

NBER working paper series no. w20438

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2014.

Summary:

This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis, and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on the distribution of long-term orientation across societies. In particular, exploiting a natural experiment associated with the expansion of suitable crops for cultivation in the course of the Columbian Exchange, the research establishes that agro-climatic characteristics in the pre-industrial era that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, triggered selection and learning processes that had a persistent positive effect on the prevalence of long-term orientation in the contemporary era.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2014.