Klaus F. Zimmermann

March 14, 2019: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. University of Malaya (UM). Joint UM – World Bank Research Seminar with GLO President and UM Visiting Professor Klaus F. Zimmermann on “Economic Preferences Across Generations“. About 90 registered participants. The presentations was followed by a long, interested and intense discussion followed by joint lunch of some core participants of the World Bank and the UM Faculty.

Extended abstract of “Economic preferences across generations: Identifying family clusters from a large-scale experiment”. Economic preferences – like time, risk and social preferences – have been shown to be very influential for real-life outcomes, such as educational achievements, labor market outcomes, or health status. The paper contributes to the recent literature that has examined how and when economic preferences are formed, putting particular emphasis on the role of intergenerational transmission of economic preferences within families in Bangladesh. The paper is the first to run incentivized experiments with fathers and mothers and their children by drawing on a unique dataset of 1,999 members of Bangladeshi families, including 911 children, aged 6-17 years, and 544 pairs of mothers and fathers. It finds a large degree of intergenerational persistence as the economic preferences of mothers and fathers are significantly positively related to their children’s economic preferences. Importantly, it finds that socio-economic status of a family has no explanatory power as soon as we control for parents’ economic preferences. A series of robustness checks deals with the role of older siblings, the similarity of parental preferences, and the average preferences within a child’s village. One can also classify whole families into one of two clusters with either relatively patient, risk-tolerant and pro-social members or relatively impatient, risk averse and spiteful members – and show that socio-economic background variables can explain whether a family belongs to the one or the other cluster. The presented paper is a substantial revision of GLO Discussion Paper No. 183 and available on request.

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March 11, 2019. Morning: Kuala Lumpur. GLO President Zimmermann takes his office as a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Economics & Administration, University of Malaya. He meets with Dean & Prof. Rohana Binti Jani and his host, GLO Fellow Prof. M. Niaz Asadullah, to discuss strategic issues. He meets also with most faculty members and staff for introductory talks about research interests and academic strategies, and enjoys a joint lunch as part of a very warm and friendly welcome.

March 11, 2019. Evening: Kota Kinabalu. GLO President Zimmermann enjoys a joint dinner with members of the Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Faculty of Business, Economics and Accountancy, in Sabah, the Northern Malaysian state of Borneo Island, including Dean & Prof. Raman Noordin and his host, GLO Fellow Prof. Beatrice Lim. In the morning of March 12, Zimmermann will provide the public University Silver Jubilee Lecture on “Global Labor Economics: Challenges and Benefits” and a public Seminar on “Publishing in Good Journals”.

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Coming from Kuala Lumpur as a Visiting Professor of the University of Malaya, GLO President Klaus F. Zimmermann will arrive on March 17 in Guangzhou, China, spending the week at IESR, Jinan University. He will attend the IESR-GLO Workshop on “Belt and Road” Labor Markets he organizes together with Shuaizhang Feng, the IESR Director and Dean. A focus of the workshop will be China, South Asia and South East Asia. Klaus F. Zimmermann will speak at the workshop about “Arsenic Contamination of Drinking Water in Bangladesh: Knowledge and Response”.

Shuaizhang Feng and Klaus F. Zimmermann in 2018 during a previous visit at Jinan University.

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Klaus F. Zimmermann, Professor Emeritus of Bonn University, Co-Director POP at UNU-MERIT, Maastricht, and Honorary Professor Maastricht University, has been appointed Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Economics & Administration of the University of Malaya for his forthcoming March visit to Malaysia. He will provide academic lectures and debate research issues with colleagues and students at the University of Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur, and the Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Kota Kinabalu. Zimmermann, who is also the President of the Global Labor Organization (GLO), will also introduce this large academic network and promote the Journal of Population Economics, which he is directing as Editor-in-Chief. He will discuss research initiatives with GLO Fellow M. Niaz Asadullah, (UM), who is also the GLO South -East Asia Research Cluster Lead.

• March 10-17, 2019: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. University of Malaya (UM). Klaus F. Zimmermann is Visiting Professor at UM. The detailed program in Malaysia is what follows:
• March 12: Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS).
  Klaus F. Zimmermann provides the public University Silver Jubilee Lecture on “Global Labor Economics: Challenges and Benefits” and a public Seminar on “Publishing in Good Journals”.
• March 13: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. University of Malaya (UM). Joint GLO -UM public Seminar on “Introducing GLO –  Pushing the Research Frontier on Labor and Human Resources Issues”
• March 14: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. University of Malaya (UM). Joint GU- World Bank Research Seminar of Klaus F. Zimmermann on “Economic Preferences Across Generations“.
• March 15: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. University of Malaya (UM). Klaus F. Zimmermann provides a public Seminar on “Publishing in Good Journals”.

M. Niaz Asadullah & Klaus F. Zimmermann in 2018 at Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.

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