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This paper investigates whether immigrants adapt to the attitudes of the majority population in the host country by focusing on the effect of ethnic persistence and assimilation on individual risk proclivity. Employing information from a unique representative German survey, we find that adaptation to the host country closes the existing immigrant-native gap in risk proclivity by reducing immigrants' risk aversion and explains the systematic variation in the observed risk attitudes across immigrants of different origins. Our analysis of the adaptation behavior of immigrants suggests that acquisition of social norms is an essential factor in the formation of individual attitudes.

Applied Economics Letters, 2009

This paper questions the perceived wisdom that migrants are more risk-loving than the native population. We employ a new large German survey of direct individual risk measures to find that first-generation migrants have lower risk attitudes than natives, which only equalize in the second generation. JEL classification: D1; D81; F22; J15; J16; J31; J62; J82

2006

Acknowledgements: The authors thank seminar participants at IZA, Rutgers University and the Virginia Commonwealth University for comments. David Jaeger thanks IZA for support It has long been hypothesized that attitudes towards risk play a central role in determining whether an individual migrates, but the empirical evidence, to the extent that it exists, has been indirect. In this paper, we use newly-available data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP) to directly measure the relationship between migration propensities and attitudes towards. We find that individuals who migrate between labor markets in Germany are more willing to take risks. This result is robust to stratifying by age, sex, education, national origin, and a variety of other demographic characteristics, as well as to the level of aggregation used to define geographic mobility. We estimate a variety of cross-sectional and panel models and find that being relatively willing to take risks is associated with an in...

China Economic Review, 2015

Risk Attitudes and Migration * To contribute to a scarce literature, in particular for developing and emerging economies, we study the nature of measured risk attitudes and their consequences for migration. We also investigate whether substantial changes in the risk environment influences risk tolerance. Using the 2009 RUMiC data for China, we find that rural-urban migrants and their family members are substantially less risk-averse than stayers. We further provide evidence that individual risk attitudes are unaffected by substantial changes in the environment and that risk tolerance is correlated across generations.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

The paper is aiming to clarify the possible determinants of peoples' attitudes towards immigrants depending on their personal characteristics as well as attitudes towards households' socio-economic stability and a country's institutions relying on the data of the European Social Survey fourth round database. The study is intending to provide empirical evidence-based grounds for the development of policy measures to integrate ethnically diverse societies, taking into account the composition of the country's population as well as other country's peculiarities. The results of the empirical analysis are consistent with several theories explaining individual and collective determinants of people's attitudes towards immigrants. Ethnic minorities, urban people, people with higher education and higher income, as well as people who have work experience abroad are, as a rule, more tolerant towards immigrants in Europe. Furthermore, people whose attitudes to socio-economic risks are lower and who evaluate the political and legal systems of a country and its police higher (e.g. political trust) are more tolerant towards immigrants. Respondents' labour market status of (employed, unemployed) does not have a statistically significant relationship with their attitudes towards immigrants. In addition to the respondent's personal characteristics and their attitudes, the collective determinants depending on country specific conditions measured by country dummies are valid in explaining people's attitudes towards immigration.

Review of Economics and Statistics, 2010

Geographic mobility is important for the functioning of labor markets because it brings labor resources to where they can be most efficiently used. It has long been hypothesized that individuals' migration propensities depend on their attitudes towards risk, but the empirical evidence, to the extent that it exists, has been indirect. In this paper, we use newly available data from the German Socio-Economic Panel to measure directly the relationship between migration propensities and attitudes towards risk. We find that individuals who are more willing to take risks are more likely to migrate between labor markets in Germany. This result is robust to stratifying by age, sex, education, national origin, and a variety of other demographic characteristics, as well as to the level of aggregation used to define geographic mobility. The effect is substantial relative to the unconditional migration propensity and compared to the conventional determinants of migration. We also find that being more willing to take risks is more important for the extensive than for the intensive margin of migration.

Journal of Economic Behavior Organization, 2014

Cultural Integration: Experimental Evidence of Changes in Immigrants' Preferences * Cultural traits play a significant role in the determination of economic outcomes and institutions. This paper presents evidence from laboratory experiments on the cultural integration of individuals of Chinese ethnicity in Australia, focusing on social preferences, preferences for competition, and risk attitudes. We show that the greater the share of education an individual receives in the West, the more they behave like Western subjects and the less they behave according to the norms of their Eastern heritage. Increased exposure to Western education has a strong negative impact on altruism, trust, and trustworthiness. For risk and competitive preferences, our results are gender-specific. These results have important implications for policy making and institution building in multi-cultural societies.

Social Science Research Network, 2012

Cultural Integration: Experimental Evidence of Changes in Immigrants' Preferences * Cultural traits play a significant role in the determination of economic outcomes and institutions. This paper presents evidence from laboratory experiments on the cultural integration of individuals of Chinese ethnicity in Australia, focusing on social preferences, preferences for competition, and risk attitudes. We show that the greater the share of education an individual receives in the West, the more they behave like Western subjects and the less they behave according to the norms of their Eastern heritage. Increased exposure to Western education has a strong negative impact on altruism, trust, and trustworthiness. For risk and competitive preferences, our results are gender-specific. These results have important implications for policy making and institution building in multi-cultural societies.

2021

Moving particularly to a new country is a risky endeavour. People who choose to migrate are often thought to be more adventurous and risk-loving than their nonmobile counterparts. Robust empirical evidence on the risk attitudes of migrants is limited, however, particularly for migrants originating from high-income countries such as Germany. This study examines whether the risk attitudes of internationally mobile Germans (‘movers’) indeed differ significantly from those of their nonmobile counterparts (‘stayers’), and whether significant differences can be observed in the risk attitudes of emigrants and remigrants. We also examine the effect of geographical and cultural distance between Germany and the destination country, predicting that it takes more courage to move to a more distant country. Living and working abroad is becoming an increasingly important feature of individual careers at least in highly developed democratic welfare states (Erlinghagen et al. 2009). International mo...

2013

Factors related to differences in risk aversion were analyzed with a measure of risk aversion inferred from answers to a hypothetical income gamble question in the U.S. Health and Retirement Study. Cumulative logistic regressions, controlling for income, age, gender, health status, current job status, and home ownership, showed that Blacks were more risk averse than Whites, but Hispanics born in the United States were not different from Whites. U.S. born respondents in an "other" group, largely Asian, were also not different from Whites. Hispanics and those in the other group who were immigrants were more risk averse than Whites. Racial/ethnic differences found in other risk aversion studies may be partly due to differences in immigrant status.