New paper on national differences in time preference.
Combines many different measures (e.g. survey questions and field studies), standardizes them and extracts a common factor.
Blue: people on average wait for future rewards
Red: people on average want immediate gain

This common factor is correlated with various things like
the nation& #39;s equity risk premium (diff between risky equity and low risk gov bonds), years of schooling, and others (credit rating, human development, etc)

Source: Universal Time Preference https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245692">https://journals.plos.org/plosone/a...

I think of time preference as a element in life-history strategy: fast life-history peoples are not inclined to wait for future rewards, slow life-history peoples are able to be more patient