| Abstrakt: |
This paper addresses the issue of the possibility of a fundamental change in the decision criteria of those students from the former USSR (specifically Ukraine) who travel to the west to study. The specific aspect of change considered here in individual time discounts -- the weight people give to the future in making choices -- which is critical to our understanding of people’s propensities to invest, save and engage in cooperative social action. The common assumption throughout the literature (in economics, sociology and political science) is that this discount is exogenously determined and fixed. Here, however, we consider the hypothesis that the weight people give to the future in assessing choices today is not culturally determined or fixed, but instead is changeable and a product of social interaction. Specifically, contrasting a sample of 172 interviews of students who are or have studied in the west against a comparable interview of 324 students currently in Ukraine, we consider the hypothesis that if citizens of former Soviet Union move from their respective countries to the West, time preferences change as a function of the duration of their stay. A significant difference in time preference is observed, with students in Ukraine exhibiting a greater propensity to discount the future greatly as compared to their "Western" counterparts. To clarify the issue of alternative explanations of this difference, an analysis is introduced that allows us to better address the dynamics of time preferences and to explicitly consider whether selection provides a better account than does socialization. Our general conclusion is that although selection accounts for the greater share of differences, length of stay provides a statistically significant account of some of this difference and thus directs us toward a reconsideration of those analyses that assume exogenously fixed time discounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
