Quicksand or Bedrock for Behavioral Economics? Assessing Foundational Empirical Questions / Victor Stango, Joanne Yoong, Jonathan Zinman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stango, Victor.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Yoong, Joanne.

Zinman, Jonathan.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w23625.

NBER working paper series no. w23625

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2017.

Summary:

Behavioral economics lacks empirical evidence on some foundational empirical questions. We adapt standard elicitation methods to measure multiple behavioral factors per person in a representative U.S. sample, along with financial condition, cognitive skills, financial literacy, classical preferences and demographics. Individually, B-factors are prevalent, distinct from other decision inputs, and correlate negatively with financial outcomes in richly-conditioned regressions. Conditioning further on other B-factors does not change the results, validating common practice of modeling B-factors separately. Corrections for low task/survey effort modestly strengthen the results. Our findings provide bedrock empirical foundations for behavioral economics, and offer methodological guidance for research designs.

Notes:

Print version record

July 2017.