Risk, time and social preferences: Evidence from large scale experiments

This dissertation contains four chapters studying individual preferences and economic decision-making. The first three chapters study preferences for risk taking and intertemporal choice. First, it asks the question whether economic preferences are related to psychological measures of personality and whether they have similar prediction power on financial decisions. Our main finding is that the channels through which personality affect economic behavior is different than those measured by economic preferences. The next two papers ask the following questions: How are financial choices within a household being made? If a household is composed of more than one individual, which family members decide and what influences their decisions? Are individual preferences considered stable over time? These questions are approached by using experimental data and information on actual financial choices such as household portfolio composition and financial wealth. Findings suggest that bargaining power with respect to risky and intertemporal choices is not equally divided within couples. The third essay finds a positive correlation between preferences over time, and no strong evidence for cross-couple effects of economic or health shocks. The last chapter discusses the relationship between social preferences, specifically, trust and trustworthiness and socio-economic status.