More individualistic countries experience higher economic growth. We provide evidence for a human-capital-based explanation of the growth effects of individualism. Using data from the largest international adult skill assessment, we establish that individualism shapes human capital formation. We identify the effects of individualism by exploiting variation between migrants at the origin-country, origin-language, and person level. Migrants from more individualistic cultures have higher cognitive skills and larger skill gains over time. They also invest more in their skills over the life cycle, as they acquire more years of schooling and are more likely to participate in adult education activities. Individualism is more important in explaining adult skill formation than any other cultural trait that previous literature has emphasized. In the labor market, more individualistic migrants earn higher wages and are less often unemployed. We show that our results cannot be explained by selective migration or omitted origin-country variables.

Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of the European Economic Association.

Among the general population, frontline workers have been identified to be at heightened risk for negative mental health consequences related to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Catholic priests, who minister to approximately 30% of Canadians, in their role as frontline workers, have been profoundly limited in the provision of pastoral care due to public health restrictions. However, little is known about the impact pandemic distress has on this largely understudied population. Four hundred and eleven Catholic priests across Canada participated in an online survey during May and June 2021. Multiple regression analysis examined how depression, anxiety, traumatic impact of events, loneliness, and religious coping style affect the psychological well-being, satisfaction as a priest, and priestly identity of participants. Results demonstrated that pandemic distress significantly impacts the psychological well-being of priest participants. Depression and loneliness surfaced as significant considerations associated with lowered psychological well-being. While neither anxiety nor traumatic distress reached a significance threshold, the religious coping style of participants emerged as an important factor in the psychological well-being of priests. Results of the study contribute to the understanding of how the pandemic has impacted a less visible group of frontline workers.

Published in: Religions 2022, 13(8).

Individualist societies are more innovative, but little is known about the underlying individual behaviors. I use international labor-market and patent data to show that individualism—the cultural dimension that emphasizes individual achievements over collective action—positively affects individual innovation. Comparing migrants from different cultural origins within the same destination country and using variation in individualism at the country, region, and person level, I find that more individualist migrants select into more innovative occupations—including research, creative jobs, and ambitious entrepreneurship. Individualists also engage more readily in knowledge diffusion on the job—even when accounting for occupational selection—by investing more time in active learning. Taken together, those innovation choices account for 44 percent of the individualism productivity premium. Individualism also positively affects patenting behavior as a direct innovation output measure.

We use slot machine games to study the exploration-exploitation trade-off in a natural yet controlled setting. In addition to standard-Bayesian exploration in the multi-armed bandit model, our model also allows for playful curiosity-based exploration in relation to the game’s entropy—its level of mystery. Choosing between three highly uncertain games with limited information in an experiment, half of players engage in explorative behavior. The choices of 20 percent of players are best explained by curiosity-based exploration: In order to keep entropy alive in the game, these players switch significantly more frequently and sacrifice expected payoff to maximize expected utility. Extensive survey measures as well as treatments that shock the payoff-entropy trade-off validate this main mechanism behind our model. This evidence on rational curiosity-based exploration contributes to a better understanding of how economic agents navigate unusual high-complexity environments in the presence of real monetary stakes.

Draft available upon request.