There is a new NBER working paper on "Overconfidence and Occupational Choice" by Edward P. Lazear.
The abstract reads:
"A statistical theory of overconfidence is proposed and applied to the issue of occupational choice. Individuals who can choose whether to engage in an activity or not must estimate their performance. The estimates have error and that error has positive expectation among those who engage in the activity. As a result, an unbiased ex ante estimate of performance in an occupation results in an ex post biased estimate of ability among those enter. The statistical theory of overconfidence provides a number of testable implications, most significant of which is that overconfidence should be more prevalent in occupations where estimates of ability are noisier. This and other implications are tested and found to hold using the Current Population Survey and Panel Study of Income Dynamics data."
Showing posts with label Beliefs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beliefs. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Friday, December 21, 2012
End of the World...
In case any of you are preparing for the end of the world (see here in case you haven't been paying attention; if you want to be prepared, here is a shopping list, lucky for you there is amazon next day delivery...), please make yourself available to those of us who think that maybe we get to keep living and working...
My former student Ned Augenblick has been using a former episode of such beliefs (though luckily more restricted in terms of who believes in it). Turns out that people who like worrying about the end of the world can collect many such opportunities (though of course then you'll always feel that this is the last time...). It would be great if someone could replicate the results of Ned and coauthors.
Ned, together with Jesse Cunha, Ernesto Dal Bo and Justin Rao, "The economics of Faith: Using an Apocalyptic Prophecy to Elicit Religious Beliefs in the Field". The abstract reads
"We model religious faith as a "demand for beliefs," following the logic of the Pascalian wager. We then demonstrate how an experimental intervention can exploit standard elicitation techniques to measure religious belief by varying prizes associated with making choices contrary to one's belief in a, crucially, falsi able religious proposition. We implemented this approach with a group that expected the "End of the World" to happen on May 21, 2011 by o ffering prizes payable before and after May 21st. The results suggest the existence of a demand for extreme, sincere beliefs that was unresponsive to experimental manipulations in price."
Happy Winter Solstice to you all
My former student Ned Augenblick has been using a former episode of such beliefs (though luckily more restricted in terms of who believes in it). Turns out that people who like worrying about the end of the world can collect many such opportunities (though of course then you'll always feel that this is the last time...). It would be great if someone could replicate the results of Ned and coauthors.
Ned, together with Jesse Cunha, Ernesto Dal Bo and Justin Rao, "The economics of Faith: Using an Apocalyptic Prophecy to Elicit Religious Beliefs in the Field". The abstract reads
"We model religious faith as a "demand for beliefs," following the logic of the Pascalian wager. We then demonstrate how an experimental intervention can exploit standard elicitation techniques to measure religious belief by varying prizes associated with making choices contrary to one's belief in a, crucially, falsi able religious proposition. We implemented this approach with a group that expected the "End of the World" to happen on May 21, 2011 by o ffering prizes payable before and after May 21st. The results suggest the existence of a demand for extreme, sincere beliefs that was unresponsive to experimental manipulations in price."
Happy Winter Solstice to you all
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)