IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucn/wpaper/201517.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On The Origins of Risk-Taking

Author

Listed:
  • Sandra E. Black
  • Paul J. Devereux
  • Petter Lundborg
  • Kaveh Majlesi

Abstract

Risk-taking behavior is highly correlated between parents and their children; however, little is known about the extent to which these relationships are genetic or determined by environmental factors. We use data on stock market participation of Swedish adoptees and relate this to the investment behavior of both their biological and adoptive parents. We find that stock market participation of parents increases that of children by about 34% and that both pre-birth and post-birth factors are important. However, once we condition on having positive financial wealth, we find that nurture has a much stronger influence on risk-taking by children, and the evidence of a relationship between stock-holding of biological parents and their adoptive children becomes very weak. We find similar results when we study the share of financial wealth that is invested in stocks. This suggests that a substantial proportion of risk-attitudes and behavior is environmentally determined.

Suggested Citation

  • Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Petter Lundborg & Kaveh Majlesi, 2015. "On The Origins of Risk-Taking," Working Papers 201517, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201517
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10197/7151
    File Function: First version, 2015
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carling, Kenneth & Holmlund, Bertil & Vejsiu, Altin, 2001. "Do Benefit Cuts Boost Job Finding? Swedish Evidence from the 1990s," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(474), pages 766-790, October.
    2. Anders Björklund & Mikael Lindahl & Erik Plug, 2006. "The Origins of Intergenerational Associations: Lessons from Swedish Adoption Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 999-1028.
    3. David Cesarini & Magnus Johannesson & Paul Lichtenstein & Örjan Sandewall & Björn Wallace, 2010. "Genetic Variation in Financial Decision‐Making," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(5), pages 1725-1754, October.
    4. Erik Plug & Wim Vijverberg, 2003. "Schooling, Family Background, and Adoption: Is It Nature or Is It Nurture?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 611-641, June.
    5. Andreas Fagereng & Charles Gottlieb & Luigi Guiso, 2017. "Asset Market Participation and Portfolio Choice over the Life-Cycle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(2), pages 705-750, April.
    6. Laurent E. Calvet & John Y. Campbell & Paolo Sodini, 2007. "Down or Out: Assessing the Welfare Costs of Household Investment Mistakes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(5), pages 707-747, October.
    7. Laurent E. Calvet & Paolo Sodini, 2014. "Twin Picks: Disentangling the Determinants of Risk-Taking in Household Portfolios," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(2), pages 867-906, April.
    8. Schmidt, Christoph M. & Tauchmann, Harald, 2011. "Heterogeneity in the intergenerational transmission of alcohol consumption: A quantile regression approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 33-42, January.
    9. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Erik Hurst, 2003. "The Correlation of Wealth across Generations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(6), pages 1155-1182, December.
    10. Dmytro Hryshko & María José Luengo‐Prado & Bent E. Sørensen, 2011. "Childhood determinants of risk aversion: The long shadow of compulsory education," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(1), pages 37-72, March.
    11. Camelia M Kuhnen & Joan Y Chiao, 2009. "Genetic Determinants of Financial Risk Taking," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(2), pages 1-4, February.
    12. Sandra E Black & Paul J Devereux & Petter Lundborg & Kaveh Majlesi, 2018. "Learning to Take Risks? The Effect of Education on Risk-Taking in Financial Markets," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(3), pages 951-975.
    13. Erik Plug, 2004. "Estimating the Effect of Mother's Schooling on Children's Schooling Using a Sample of Adoptees," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 358-368, March.
    14. Hjalmarsson, Randi & Lindquist, Matthew J., 2013. "The origins of intergenerational associations in crime: Lessons from Swedish adoption data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 68-81.
    15. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 2008. "Men, Women and Risk Aversion: Experimental Evidence," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, in: Charles R. Plott & Vernon L. Smith (ed.), Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 113, pages 1061-1073, Elsevier.
    16. Barnea, Amir & Cronqvist, Henrik & Siegel, Stephan, 2010. "Nature or nurture: What determines investor behavior?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 583-604, December.
    17. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2012. "The Intergenerational Transmission of Risk and Trust Attitudes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(2), pages 645-677.
    18. Helena Holmlund & Mikael Lindahl & Erik Plug, 2011. "The Causal Effect of Parents' Schooling on Children's Schooling: A Comparison of Estimation Methods," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(3), pages 615-651, September.
    19. Cesarini, David & Johannesson, Magnus & Oskarsson, Sven, 2014. "Pre-Birth Factors, Post-Birth Factors, and Voting: Evidence from Swedish Adoption Data," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 108(1), pages 71-87, February.
    20. Bruce Sacerdote, 2007. "How Large are the Effects from Changes in Family Environment? A Study of Korean American Adoptees," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 119-157.
    21. Miles S. Kimball & Claudia R. Sahm & Matthew D. Shapiro, 2009. "Risk Preferences in the PSID: Individual Imputations and Family Covariation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 363-368, May.
    22. Matthew J. Lindquist & Joeri Sol & Mirjam Van Praag, 2015. "Why Do Entrepreneurial Parents Have Entrepreneurial Children?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(2), pages 269-296.
    23. Frank P. Stafford & Ngina S. Chiteji, 1999. "Portfolio Choices of Parents and Their Children as Young Adults: Asset Accumulation by African-American Families," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 377-380, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Claus Thustrup Kreiner & Søren Leth-Petersen & Louise Charlotte Willerslev-Olsen, 2020. "Financial Trouble Across Generations: Evidence from the Universe of Personal Loans in Denmark," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(625), pages 233-262.
    2. Sandra E Black & Paul J Devereux & Petter Lundborg & Kaveh Majlesi, 2020. "Poor Little Rich Kids? The Role of Nature versus Nurture in Wealth and Other Economic Outcomes and Behaviours," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(4), pages 1683-1725.
    3. Iris Kesternich & James P. Smith & Joachim K. Winter & Maximiliane Hörl, 2020. "Early‐Life Circumstances Predict Measures of Trust among Adults: Evidence from Hunger Episodes in Post‐War Germany," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(1), pages 280-305, January.
    4. Marco Di Maggio & Amir Kermani & Kaveh Majlesi, 2020. "Stock Market Returns and Consumption," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(6), pages 3175-3219, December.
    5. Contreras Suarez, Diana & Cameron, Lisa A., 2016. "Conditional Cash Transfers: Do They Change Time Preferences and Educational Aspirations?," IZA Discussion Papers 10309, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Garbinti, Bertrand & Georges-Kot, Simon, 2019. "On the retirement effect of inheritance: heterogeneity and the role of risk aversion," Working Paper Series 2222, European Central Bank.
    7. Andrzej Cwynar, 2021. "Do Women Behave Financially Worse than Men? Evidence from Married and Cohabiting Couples," Central European Business Review, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2021(5), pages 81-98.
    8. Nataliya Barasinska & Dorothea Schäfer, 2018. "Gender role asymmetry and stock market participation – evidence from four European household surveys," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(12), pages 1026-1046, August.
    9. Black, Sandra E. & Devereux, Paul J. & Lundborg, Petter & Majlesi, Kaveh, 2015. "Poor Little Rich Kids? The Determinants of the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth," IZA Discussion Papers 9227, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Brown, Martin & Henchoz, Caroline & Spycher, Thomas, 2017. "Culture and Financial Literacy," Working Papers on Finance 1703, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Petter Lundborg & Kaveh Majlesi, 2017. "On the Origins of Risk-Taking in Financial Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(5), pages 2229-2278, October.
    2. Sandra E Black & Paul J Devereux & Petter Lundborg & Kaveh Majlesi, 2020. "Poor Little Rich Kids? The Role of Nature versus Nurture in Wealth and Other Economic Outcomes and Behaviours," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(4), pages 1683-1725.
    3. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Petter Lundborg & Kaveh Majlesi, 2015. "Poor Little Rich Kids? - The Determinants of the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth," Working Papers 201516, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    4. Andreas Fagereng & Magne Mogstad & Marte Rønning, 2021. "Why Do Wealthy Parents Have Wealthy Children?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(3), pages 703-756.
    5. Sandra E Black & Paul J Devereux & Petter Lundborg & Kaveh Majlesi, 2018. "Learning to Take Risks? The Effect of Education on Risk-Taking in Financial Markets," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(3), pages 951-975.
    6. Petter Lundborg & Martin Nordin & Dan Olof Rooth, 2018. "The intergenerational transmission of human capital: the role of skills and health," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(4), pages 1035-1065, October.
    7. Barnea, Amir & Cronqvist, Henrik & Siegel, Stephan, 2010. "Nature or nurture: What determines investor behavior?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 583-604, December.
    8. E. Black, Sandra & J. Devereux, Paul & Lundborg, Etter & Majlesi, Kaveh, 2016. "No. 2015/2 :Learning to Take Risks? The Effects of Education on Risk-Taking in Finacial Markets," Knut Wicksell Working Paper Series 2015/2, Lund University, Knut Wicksell Centre for Financial Studies.
    9. Laurent E. Calvet & Paolo Sodini, 2014. "Twin Picks: Disentangling the Determinants of Risk-Taking in Household Portfolios," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(2), pages 867-906, April.
    10. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2017_025 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Evelina Björkegren & Mikael Lindahl & Mårten Palme & Emilia Simeonova, 2022. "Pre- and Post-Birth Components of Intergenerational Persistence in Health and Longevity: Lessons from a Large Sample of Adoptees," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(1), pages 112-142.
    12. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    13. Marte E. S. Ulvestad & Simen Markussen, 2023. "Born or bred? The roles of nature and nurture for intergenerational persistence in labour market outcomes," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(2), pages 1005-1047, April.
    14. Knüpfer, Samuli & Rantapuska, Elias & Sarvimäki, Matti, 2017. "Social interaction in the family: Evidence from investors’ security holdings," Research Discussion Papers 25/2017, Bank of Finland.
    15. Bennett, Patrick, 2018. "The heterogeneous effects of education on crime: Evidence from Danish administrative twin data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 160-177.
    16. Andra C. Ghent & Marianna Kudlyak, 2015. "Intergenerational Linkages in Household Credit," Working Paper 15-14, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    17. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    18. Hjalmarsson, Randi & Lindquist, Matthew J., 2013. "The origins of intergenerational associations in crime: Lessons from Swedish adoption data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 68-81.
    19. Holmlund, Helena & Lindahl, Mikael & Plug, Erik, 2010. "The Causal Eff ect of Parent’s Schooling on Children’s Schooling," Working Paper Series, Center for Labor Studies 2010:8, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    20. Necker, Sarah & Voskort, Andrea, 2014. "Intergenerational transmission of risk attitudes – A revealed preference approach," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 66-89.
    21. Hyytinen, Ari & Ilmakunnas, Pekka & Johansson, Edvard & Toivanen, Otto, 2013. "Heritability of Lifetime Income," MPRA Paper 46326, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Nature versus nurture; Portfolio choice; Risk-taking;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:201517. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nicolas Clifton (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.