Abstract
Time preferences are central to human decision making; therefore, a thorough understanding of their international differences is highly relevant. Previous measurements, however, vary widely in their methodology, from questions answered on the Likert scale to lottery-type questions. We show that these different measurements correlate to a large degree and that they have a common factor that can predict a broad spectrum of variables: the countries’ credit ratings, their innovation, gas prices (as a proxy for environmental protection), body mass index (as a proxy for health consciousness), and average years of school attendance. The resulting data on this time preference factor for N=117 countries and regions will be highly useful for further research. Our aggregation method is applicable to merge cross-cultural studies that measure the same latent construct with different methodologies.
Highlights
What is time? This is a fascinating question to almost every human being
The good news is that we find converging evidence of cultural variations of such “temporal fingerprints”, and we illustrate the predictive power of our composite index on various behaviors at the country level, ranging from savings to environmental protection
We estimate the common factor of time preferences using principal component analysis (PCA) for the set of all studies and for a subset of the studies to avoid the overrepresentation of a single study
Summary
What is time? This is a fascinating question to almost every human being. Einstein reminded us that “the distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” In his book “Time Wars”, Jeremy Rifkin noted that “Every culture has its own unique set of temporal fingerprints. This is a fascinating question to almost every human being. Einstein reminded us that “the distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”. In his book “Time Wars”, Jeremy Rifkin noted that “Every culture has its own unique set of temporal fingerprints. To know a people is to know the time values they live by.”. Rifkin observes that “All of our perception of self and world is mediated by the way we imagine, explain, use, and implement time” [1]. Each culture has its own perception, preference, and social norms regarding time [2]. Is there a way to measure this cultural variation of “temporal fingerprints”?
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