TY - JOUR
T1 - Tat will tell
T2 - Tattoos and time preferences
AU - Ruffle, Bradley J.
AU - Wilson, Anne E.
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper benefited from helpful comments from Jeff Chan, Ananish Chaudhuri, Naomi Feldman, Miguel Fonseca, Jonas Fooken, Gilles Grolleau, Brit Grosskopf, Alex Krumer, Peter Matthews, Joniada Milla, William Morrison, Philip Oreopoulos, Justin Smith, Tony So, Arthur Sweetman, seminar participants at numerous conferences and departmental seminars and two anonymous referees. Kaylee Boulton, Ashley Howard and Jordan Kafka provided excellent research assistance. Ruffle thanks the Laurier Centre for Economic Research & Policy Analysis (LCERPA) and Wilson thanks the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) for funding.
Funding Information:
This paper benefited from helpful comments from Jeff Chan, Ananish Chaudhuri, Naomi Feldman, Miguel Fonseca, Jonas Fooken, Gilles Grolleau, Brit Grosskopf, Alex Krumer, Peter Matthews, Joniada Milla, William Morrison, Philip Oreopoulos, Justin Smith, Tony So, Arthur Sweetman, seminar participants at numerous conferences and departmental seminars and two anonymous referees. Kaylee Boulton, Ashley Howard and Jordan Kafka provided excellent research assistance. Ruffle thanks the Laurier Centre for Economic Research & Policy Analysis (LCERPA) and Wilson thanks the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) for funding.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2019/10/1
Y1 - 2019/10/1
N2 - Survey and experimental evidence documents discrimination against tattooed individuals in the labor market and in commercial transactions. Thus, individuals’ decision to get tattooed may reflect short-sighted time preferences. We show that, according to numerous measures, those with tattoos, especially visible ones, are more short-sighted and impulsive than the non-tattooed. Almost nothing mitigates these results, neither the motive for the tattoo, the time contemplated before getting tattooed nor the time elapsed since the last tattoo. Even the expressed intention to get a(nother) tattoo predicts increased short-sightedness and helps establish the direction of causality between tattoos and short-sightedness.
AB - Survey and experimental evidence documents discrimination against tattooed individuals in the labor market and in commercial transactions. Thus, individuals’ decision to get tattooed may reflect short-sighted time preferences. We show that, according to numerous measures, those with tattoos, especially visible ones, are more short-sighted and impulsive than the non-tattooed. Almost nothing mitigates these results, neither the motive for the tattoo, the time contemplated before getting tattooed nor the time elapsed since the last tattoo. Even the expressed intention to get a(nother) tattoo predicts increased short-sightedness and helps establish the direction of causality between tattoos and short-sightedness.
KW - Experimental economics
KW - Impulsivity
KW - Tattoo
KW - Time preferences
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85071134640&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2019.08.001
DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2019.08.001
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85071134640
SN - 0167-2681
VL - 166
SP - 566
EP - 585
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
ER -