Stigler–Becker versus Myers–Briggs: why preference-based explanations are scientifically meaningful and empirically important

Economists typically object to preference-based explanations of human behavior; differences in preferences “explain everything and therefore nothing”. But this argument is only correct assuming that no empirical evidence exists to discipline preference-based explanations. In fact, over the past decade, personality psychologists have produced a robust collection of stylized facts about human preferences. While preferences are, empirically, quite stable, they are far from identical and have proven predictive power for economically interesting variables. The empirical challenge for future research is to jointly estimate the impact of preferences and constraints to obtain unbiased measures of their relative importance. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: D11; A12; J20