# Strategic Thinking Skills: A Key to Collective Economics Success

**Source**: https://bm.hkust.edu.hk/bizinsight/2026/01/strategic-thinking-skills-key-collective-economics-success
**Parent**: https://bm.hkust.edu.hk/bizinsight/leadership-and-behavioral-decision-making

[ [Leadership and Behavioral Decision-making](https://bm.hkust.edu.hk/bizinsight/leadership-and-behavioral-decision-making "Leadership and Behavioral Decision-making") ]

Strategic Thinking Skills: A Key to Collective Economics Success

27 Jan 2026

CHOI, Syngjoo

KIM, Seonghoon

[LIM, Wooyoung](https://bm.hkust.edu.hk/faculty/lim-wooyoung)

Head, Lee Heng Fellow, Professor

[Read Full Paper](https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/mic.20220259)

We conduct a large-scale experiment to measure elementary aspects of strategic thinking skills and their linkage to labor market outcomes. Two incentivized measures of higher-order rationality and backward induction are developed. Males' (females') strategic thinking skills are positively (negatively) associated with individual labor income. However, among married individuals, strategic thinking skills are significantly and positively associated with their household labor income regardless of gender, highlighting the importance of strategic thinking skills for collective economic success. We argue that the intrahousehold channels encompassing collective labor supply with home-to-workplace spillover and marriage assortative matching offer the most plausible explanation for our findings.