Download or read book Essays in development and behavioral economics written by Chaning Jang and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays in Development and Behavioral Economics written by Frank N. Schilbach and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insufficient knowledge of appropriate use can hamper technology adoption.
Download or read book Three Essays on Development Economics and Behavioral Economics written by Changcheng Song and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation studies retirement savings, weather insurance take-up and reference-dependent theory in the literature of development economics and behavioral economics. It consists of two field experiments and one laboratory experiment. In Chapter one, I uses a field experiment to study the relationship between financial literacy and retirement savings in China. When the Chinese government launched a highly subsidized pension system in rural areas in 2009, 73% of households chose to save at a level that is lower than that implied by a benchmark life-cycle model. We test to what extent the low contribution level is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of compound interest. In a field experiment with more than 1000 Chinese households, we randomly assigned some households to a financial education treatment, emphasizing the concept of compound interest. This treatment increased the pension contribution by roughly 40%. The increase accounts for 51% of the gap between contribution levels in the Control group and those implied by the benchmark model. To pinpoint mechanisms, we elicited financial literacy after the intervention, and added a third group in which we explain the pension benefit in general. We find that the neglect of compound interest is correlated with low contributions to the pension plans in the control group, and that financial education about compound interest does help households partially correct their erroneous understanding of compound interest. Moreover, explaining compound interest increases their ability to translate benefits into their own situation. Welfare analysis suggests that financial education increases total welfare, although the fact that the treatment effects are heterogeneous implies that some households end up saving more than the level implied by the benchmark model. In Chapter two (coauthored with Jing Cai), we use a novel experimental design to test the role of experience and information in insurance take-up in rural China, where weather insurance is a new and highly subsidized product. We randomly selected a group of poor households to play insurance games and find that it increases the actual insurance take-up by roughly 48%. To pinpoint mechanisms, we test whether the result is due to: (1) changes in risk attitudes, (2) changes in the perceived probability of future disasters, (3) learning the objective benefits of insurance, or (4) the experience of hypothetical disaster. We show that the overall effect is unlikely to be fully explained by mechanisms (1) to (3), and that the experience acquired in playing the insurance game matters. To explain these findings, we develop a descriptive model in which agents give less weight to disasters and benefits which they experienced infrequently. Our estimation also suggests that experience acquired in the recent insurance game has a stronger effect on the actual insurance take-up than that of real disasters in the previous year, implying that learning from experience displays a strong recency effect. In Chapter three, I conducted a controlled lab experiment to test to what extent expectations and the status quo determine the reference point. In the experiment, I explicitly manipulated stochastic expectations and exogenously varied expectations in different groups. In addition, I exogenously varied the time of receiving new information and tested whether individuals adjust their reference points to new information, and the speed of the adjustment. With this design, I jointly estimated the reference points and the preferences based on the reference points. I find that both expectations and the status quo influence the reference point but that expectations play a more important role. Structural estimation suggests that the model of the stochastic reference point fits my data better than that with expected utility certainty equivalent as the reference point. The result also suggests that subjects adjust reference points quickly, which further confirms the role of expectation as reference point.
Download or read book The Selten School of Behavioral Economics written by Axel Ockenfels and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-09-09 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reinhard Selten, to date the only German Nobel Prize laureate in economics, celebrates his 80th birthday in 2010. While his contributions to game theory are well-known, the behavioral side of his scientific work has received less public exposure, even though he has been committed to experimental research during his entire career, publishing more experimental than theoretical papers in top-tier journals. This Festschrift is dedicated to Reinhard Selten’s exceptional influence on behavioral and experimental economics. In this collection of academic highlight papers, a number of his students are joined by leading scholars in experimental research to document the historical role of the “Meister” in the development of the research methodology and of several sub-fields of behavioral economics. Next to the academic insight in these highly active fields of experimental research, the papers also provide a glance at Reinhard Selten’s academic and personal interaction with his students and peers.
Download or read book Essays on Behavioral Economics written by George Katona and published by Ann Arbor, Mich. : Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. This book was released on 1980 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays in Behavioral Economics written by Uri Gneezy and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Four Essays on Behavioral Economics written by Pleßner, Marco and published by kassel university press GmbH. This book was released on 2017 with total page 7 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Key Terms: Behavioral Economics, Behavioral Finance, Experimental Economics
Download or read book Essays in Behavioral and Development Economics written by Johannes Haushofer and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays in Behavioral Economics and Development written by Christian Johannes Meyer and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation presents three independent chapters that build on the tools of behavioral economics to study issues related to labor markets in low-income countries and charitable giving. In the first chapter, I investigate whether present bias correlates with savings and job search behavior in a population of low-skill workers in Ethiopia. I conduct a field experiment with 460 women who begin employment in the ready-made garment industry. Most are rural-urban migrants without work experience for whom the job represents a stepping stone into the labor market. Almost all workers plan to use their jobs to save money and to look for higher-wage employment, but many fall short of their intentions. I propose self-control problems as a candidate explanation. I elicit a measure of present bias in a tightly-controlled experiment and match results to highfrequency survey data that I collect over a period of three months. Present bias is a significant predictor of job search effort, controlling for liquidity and a broad range of covariates. Present-biased workers spend 57 percent less time on job search per week. As a result of reduced search, present-biased workers generate fewer offers and stay in their jobs significantly longer. In contrast, I find no significant correlation between present bias and savings behavior. I discuss implications for the design of commitment devices in this context. In the second chapter, co-authored with Egon Tripodi, we study incentivized voluntary contributions to charitable activities. Motivated by the market for blood donations in Germany, we consider a setting where different incentives coexist and agents can choose to donate without receiving monetary compensation. We use a model that interacts image concerns of agents with intrinsic and extrinsic incentives to donate. Laboratory results show that a collection system where compensation can be turned down can improve the efficiency of collection. Image effects and incentive effects do not crowd each other out. A significant share of donors turn down compensation. Heterogeneity in treatment effects suggests gender-specific preferences over signaling. In the third chapter, also co-authored with Egon Tripodi, we use a field experiment to study how social image concerns affect pledges to engage in a charitable activity. We work with two different blood banks and a municipal government in Germany to offer sign-ups for human whole blood donations. Motivated by a simple signaling framework, we randomly vary the type of organization to donate to and the visibility of the pledge to donate. Our setting also provides natural variation in the group of people that form the "audience" for social image concerns. We find evidence for strong social image concerns when subjects are asked in public whether they would like to pledge a donation with a well-known charity. Almost all subjects renege on their pledge, with no detectable differences between treatments. We discuss avenues for further research and end on a cautionary note for organizations looking to harness pledges to encourage individuals to do good.
Download or read book Renaissance in Behavioral Economics written by Roger Frantz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-06-14 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economists working on behavioral economics have been awarded the Nobel Prize four times in recent years. This book explores this innovative area and in particular focuses on the work of Harvey Leibenstein, one of the pioneers of the discipline. The topics covered in the book include agency theory; dynamic efficiency; evolutionary economics; X-efficiency; the effect of emotions, specifically affect on decision-making; market pricing; experimental economics; human resource management; the Carnegie School, and intra-industry efficiency in less developed countries.
Download or read book Essays on Behavioral Economics written by George Katona and published by . This book was released on with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays in Behavioral Economics written by Joshua Reid Schwartzstein and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays in Behavioral Development Economics written by Abu Bakker Siddique and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays in Behavioral Economics written by Yiming Liu and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays on Economic Psychology written by Hermann Brandstätter and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic behavior is explored from a psychological perspective by both, prominent economic psychologists with a long tradition in studying economic problems as well as economists who are open and interested in the psychological aspects of economic behavior. The contributions discuss the prospects and difficulties of this dialogue between psychology and economics and survey some important areas of research where such an interdisciplinary approach has proved to be successful. The text can also be used to introduce psychology to economists in order to give them an idea how to analyze economic problems from a psychological perspective. It also indicates many urgent and exciting research topics awaiting eager scholars to carry on the dialogue.
Download or read book Essays in Behavioral Economics and Innovation written by Duncan Sheppard Gilchrist and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays, two in behavioral economics and one on the economics of innovation.
Download or read book Essays in Behavioral Economics written by Janos Zsiros and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of two distinct chapters that answer questions in behavioral economics about the relationship between labor supply and reference points. Each chapter is divided into two parts. The first part of the first chapter proposes the theoretical background to better understand labor supply decisions of workers with multiple reference points. The second part contains empirical results from a laboratory experiment. The second chapter analyzes a classical contract theory problem with agents who have non-standard, reference dependent, preferences. The first part of the second chapter analyzes the principal-agent model under full information, while the second part of the chapter introduces uncertainty into the model. The first essay uses a real effort experiment to test the predictions of models with expectation-based and history-based reference points. For the expectationbased reference point, an agent cares about outcomes relative to her expectation, and she experiences a loss in utility if the actual outcome is below her expectation. For the history-based reference point, an agent evaluates her actual outcome compared to an outcome that she had in the past, and she experiences a loss in utility if the actual outcome is below the one from the past. In the experiment, I manipulate participants' past earnings exogenously to establish a history-based reference point and manipulate expectations about future earnings to establish an expectation-based reference point. Consistent with the model's predictions, I found evidence of both kinds of reference points. Subjects work significantly more in the high expectation treatment; on average, they earn $1.1 more (a marginal effect of 18.2%) in the high expectation treatment compared to the average earnings of $6.03 in the low expectation treatment. Subjects in the high history treatment earn $0.46 more (a marginal effect of 7.2%) compared to the average earnings of $6.35 in the low history treatment. The sign of the effect is in line with the main model's prediction for effort level, but the size of the effect is not significantly different from zero due to the low power of the test. The second essay analyzes a principal-agent model with an agent who has reference-dependent preferences with exogenously given reference point over either money or effort level. I find that the optimal effort level, designed by the principal, does not depend on the reference salary. I show that employers with projects where effort is crucial hire agents with high reference points or push up the reference points of agents whose initial reference point is low. Finally, I discuss the predictions of the model for matching between employers and workers based on workers' reference dependence. I show that employers with projects where effort is crucial hire agents with high reference points or push up the reference points of agents whose initial reference point is low. The last part of the essay presents a theoretical model, in which the principal cannot observe the effort level produced by the agent, and is thus unable to make the optimal wage contract depend upon it. I analyze the Lagrangian corresponding to the problem with uncertainty and I derive conditions for the optimal wage contract and optimal effort level.
