Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/60190 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research No. 457
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW), Berlin
Abstract: 
This paper examines the question of whether risk aversion of prime-age workers is negatively correlated with human height to a statistically significant degree. A variety of estimation methods, tests and specifications yield robust results that permit one to answer this question in the affirmative. Hausman-Taylor panel estimates, however, reveal that height effects disappear if personality traits and skills, parents' behaviour, and interactions between environment and individual abilities appear simultaneously. Height is a good proxy for these influences if they are not observable. Not only one factor but a combination of several traits and interaction effects can describe the time-invariant individual effect in a panel model of risk attitude.
Subjects: 
height
risk preference
JEL: 
D90
J13
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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