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Education as a precautionary asset

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  • Cipollone, Angela

Abstract

By using data from the latest wave of the Indonesia Life Family Survey, the present work investigates whether and to which extent child time allocation depends on the joint impact of liquidity constraints and risk attitudes. We employ a double selection model of school hours, by adding time preferences, risk attitudes and proxies of risks and shocks among the relevant regressors, and controlling for sample selection and endogeneity of liquidity constraints and school enrolment. To this aim, we exploit measures of time preferences and risk attitudes elicited from individuals’ responses to hypothetical gambles and consider the past occurrence of shocks to proxy the risk profiles of the households under the assumption that households use past income volatility to predict future volatility. It will be shown that, under liquidity constraints, risk averse parents raise a precautionary demand for education as an ex-ante risk coping strategy, so to insure future consumption through higher returns from their children’s work.

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  • Cipollone, Angela, 2011. "Education as a precautionary asset," MPRA Paper 34575, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:34575
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    Cited by:

    1. Muhammad Ryan SANJAYA, 2013. "Shocks, Physical Characteristics, and Risk Taking Behaviour," Asian Journal of Empirical Research, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 3(9), pages 1081-1105, September.
    2. Sanjaya, Muhammad Ryan, 2013. "On the source of risk aversion in Indonesia using micro data 2007," Economics Discussion Papers 2013-33, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    schooling; risk aversion; liquidity constraints; risks; shocks;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

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