Using representative panel data sets from the Netherlands and Germany, this study analyzes the long-term stability of two behaviorally validated measures on individuals’ forward-looking attitude: the consideration of future consequences scale and two ultra-short survey items on patience and impulsiveness. Overall, their intra-individual correlation is sufficiently high to consider the measures as stable, and a comprehensive list of live events does not correlate with their instability. Past events have only a small and time-restricted effect, if any. Robustness tests indicate that measurement errors seem to be the most likely reason for their instability. Although these findings mitigate endogeneity concerns, error-in-variable biases can, nevertheless, be substantial.

本研究使用来自荷兰和德国的代表性面板数据集，分析了两个经过行为验证的个人前瞻性态度衡量指标的长期稳定性：未来后果的考虑量表和两个关于耐心和冲动的超短调查项目。总体而言，它们的个体内相关性足够高，可以将这些措施视为稳定的，并且现场事件的综合列表与其不稳定性无关。如果有的话，过去的事件只会产生很小且受时间限制的影响。稳健性测试表明，测量误差似乎是其不稳定的最可能原因。尽管这些发现减轻了内生性问题，但变量误差偏差可能很大。