The Yeoman's Portfolio: Measuring Historical Risk Preferences using Crop Choice (with Daniela Vidart)
Updated: 08/2026
We design a method for measuring the risk preferences of agents in the deep past. The method combines a structural model of crop choice as a portfolio allocation with machine-learning prediction of expected crop returns, using historic agronomic and climate data. We estimate county-level risk preferences for the United States and farmer-level preferences in Kansas from 1889 to 1929. More risk averse farmers leveraged less, were less likely to purchase novel WWI Liberty Bonds, and were more likely to participate in local risk-sharing institutions. We show that higher risk aversion predicts slower tractor adoption and farm mechanization during the 1920s.
`Nobody Wants to Work Anymore': Lifetime Labor Market Experiences and the Decline of Male LFP in the United States (with Daniela Vidart)
Updated: 08/2026
Media coverage: VoxEU Column Wall Street Journal The Hill
Male labor force participation has declined steadily for 50 years in the United States. We show that one cause has been changes in men's beliefs about the returns to work, shaped by lifetime experiences of the aggregate male labor market. We find that experience effects on participation persist for men who move across state lines, are stronger for same-race male experiences, and are driven by formative childhood years. We also document effects of experiences on direct measures of labor market expectations. Our findings suggest that experience effects can turn short-run declines in labor demand into long-run declines in labor supply.
Climate Change is Decreasing Risk Aversion Globally (with Meng Song)
Updated: 05/2026
We estimate the effects of climate change on individual risk preferences, using global cross-sectional preference data linked to personal climate histories. We find that a 1 degree C increase in mean lifetime temperature is associated with a 0.318-unit decrease in relative risk aversion globally. We replicate the results in panel datasets from four countries containing longitudinal measures of risk preferences. Historical projections indicate that climate change between 1981 and 2026 decreased median global risk aversion by 16%. Our results suggest that climate change may be shaping economic preferences in ways that could erode support for its own mitigation.
Risk-Taking Adaptation to Macroeconomic Experiences (with Daniela Vidart)
Forthcoming, Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics
We study how lifetime experiences of macroeconomic volatility shape individual risk attitudes. We build a Bayesian model where risk aversion endogenously adapts to agents' beliefs about an exogenous income process. We combine panel data from Indonesia and Mexico containing elicited measures of risk aversion with state-level real GDP growth time series capturing individuals' lifetime macroeconomic experiences. Consistent with the model's predictions, we find that measured risk aversion increases with macroeconomic volatility, and this is a first-order driver of risk attitudes. These results are robust to many alternate specifications and controls and extend to risk-taking behavior in other domains.
James H. Fowler, Seth J. Hill, Remy Levin, Nick Obradovich. Stay-at-home orders associate with subsequent decreases in COVID-19 cases and fatalities in the United States. PLOS One, 2021
Richard Karlsson Linner, Pietro Biroli, Edward Kong,..., Remy Z. Levin,..., Daniel J. Benjamin, Philipp D Koellinger, Jonathan P. Beauchamp. Genome-wide association analyses of risk tolerance and risky behaviors in over 1 million individuals identify hundreds of loci and shared genetic influences. Nature Genetics, 2019.
Levin, Remy Z., and Chen, Paul. Rethinking the Constitution-Treaty Relationship. International Journal of Constitutional Law, 10(1), 242-260, 2012.
A Theory of Natural Learning
Risk, Insurance, and the Rise and Fall of American Whaling
Risk Preference Adaptation Theory
The Yeoman's Bond
Dimension, Hutchinson Operators, and Self-Similarity: Fundamental Concepts in Fractal Geometry (Senior Thesis, submitted as condition for graduation with distinction in Mathematics, WWU 2013)