Collaborative Research: Social versus individual learning in life-cycle consumption and saving

这个项目通过实验检验人们是否可以通过观察和/或听取他人的建议来学习如何更好地完成这些任务。研究中的假设是基于社会学和心理学领域的大量文献，这些文献一方面涉及观察性学习、社会性学习和合作学习，另一方面涉及小组过程和表现。本文研究的任务来源于当代有关消费和储蓄的经济学文献。这些实验的目的是确定：(A)社会学习是否可以在这些重要的经济环境中发生；(B)什么因素控制着这种学习的发生和/或强度；以及(C)这种学习与从个人重复中进行的个人学习相比如何。智力价值：生命周期消费和储蓄任务(以下简称LCCS任务)在宏观经济理论中发挥着核心作用，也是几个微观经济学领域的激烈研究对象。实验检查表明，人们没有以最佳方式执行LCCS任务。虽然在实验环境中，一些个体的学习和适应可能会随着LCCS任务的个体重复而发生，但这与外部世界(实验室外的世界)的LCCS任务的相关性是值得怀疑的，因为根据定义，在任何代理人的整个生命周期中，它们在外部世界中只遇到一次。然而，人们可能会从观察(或从其他执行过或正在执行类似任务的人那里获得建议)中学习。也就是说，存在关于LCCS任务的社会学习的可能性，即使个人通过重复学习是不可能的。类似的评论也适用于许多其他重要的个人决策任务，这些任务本质上是一生只遇到一次的。但很少有任务像LCCS任务那样重要、普遍或复杂。广泛的影响：实验者通常在实验设计中构建任务的重复。在以下情况下，这是一个值得怀疑的过程：(A)所分析的决策问题是外部世界中唯一的、一生只有一次的任务，例如LCCS任务；以及(B)实验者希望她的结果在外部有效。然而，如果社会学习发生在这样的任务中，并且社会学习与个人学习相比更好，那么这种程序就会获得尊重，因为它可以被视为自然发生的环境中发生的社会学习的“实验室替代品”。因此，本研究将为实验经济学的方法论基础增添有益的知识。

This project experimentally examines whether people can learn how to perform these tasks better through observation of, and/or advice from, other people. The hypotheses under scrutiny are motivated by a large literature in sociological and psychological disciplines concerning observational, social and cooperative learning on the one hand, and group processes and performance on the other. The tasks studied are drawn from the contemporary economic literature on consumption and saving. The purpose of the experiments is to determine: (a) Whether social learning can occur in these important economic settings; (b) what factors govern the occurrence and/or strength of this learning; and (c) how such learning compares to individual learning from individual repetition.Intellectual Merit: The life-cycle consumption and saving task (hereafter LCCS task) plays a central role in macroeconomic theory, and is also an intense object of study in several microeconomic areas. Experimental examinations suggest that people do not perform LCCS tasks optimally. And while it is possible that some individual learning and adaptation could take place with individual repetition of LCCS tasks in an experimental setting, this is of questionable relevance to LCCS tasks in the external world (the world outside the lab) since, by definition, they are only encountered once in their entirety over any agent's lifetime in the external world. However, people may learn from observation of (or advice from) other people who have performed (or are performing) similar tasks. That is, there is a possibility of social learning about LCCS tasks, even though individual learning through repetition is impossible. Similar remarks apply to many other important individual decision making tasks that are, by their nature, only encountered once in a lifetime. But few are as important, ubiquitous or complex as the LCCS task.Broader Impact: Experimentalists commonly build repetition of tasks into experimental designs. This is a questionable procedure whenever: (a) The decision problem under analysis is a unique, once-over-a-lifetime task in the external world, such as the LCCS task; and (b) the experimenter wishes her results to be externally valid. However, if social learning occurs for such tasks, and social learning compares well with individual learning, then the procedure gains in respectability since it may be regarded as a "laboratory substitute" for the social learning that would take place in naturally occurring settings. So this research will add useful knowledge to the methodological base of experimental economics.