The Effects of Education on Behavioral Decision-Making

该奖项资助的研究将帮助我们了解教育如何影响人们做出的财务决策。 这里的重点不是关于退休和投资的有针对性的教育，而是普通高等教育。 研究小组将通过将一组大学生与具有相同学术背景和成就的学生进行比较来实现这一目标，这些学生不得不推迟大学入学。研究小组将检查受过大学教育的参与者是否会随着时间的推移做出更一致的决策，他们是否更有可能或更少地在小风险上赌博，以及他们是否不太可能在财务决策中使用不准确的经验法则。 该项目的结果将产生更广泛的影响，提供新的证据，说明教育如何有助于鼓励退休储蓄和对健康和福祉的长期投资。过去的研究已经确定，个人的行为方式往往与经济模型中使用的一些关键假设不一致。 特别是，他们可能是时间不一致的，对rsik的态度取决于参考点或问题框架，并有系统的不正确的信念。 这些行为可以解释为什么一些家庭没有足够的退休储蓄，年金需求对框架的敏感性，个人对小风险的过度保险，以及投资行为强烈依赖于股票的过去表现。 先前的研究表明，这些行为在受教育程度较低的人中更为常见。 然而，这种相关性可能只是导致人们选择较少教育的个体差异的结果。 例如，以经济模型预测的方式重视长期利益的人可能不仅会在退休储蓄上投资更多，而且还会在自己的教育上投入更多的时间和精力。 研究小组建议使用一个不寻常的自然实验来解决这个难题。 一所招生人数不多的公立大学不得不抽签决定入学名额。 获奖者立即注册，其他人必须等待一年才能注册。 该团队将使用实验室实验和来自两组的调查数据来研究获奖者（由于早期入学而接受更多教育）是否不太可能表现出（i）时间不一致性，（ii）小风险规避，（iii）使用有偏见的策略，或（iii）对框架效应的敏感性。

This award funds research that will help us understand how education affects the financial decisions people make. The focus here is not on targeted education about retirement and investing, but general higher education. The research team will accomplish this by comparing a group of college students to comparable students with the same academic background and accomplishments who had to delay college enrollment. The research team will examine whether the college-educated participants make more consistent decisions over time, whether they are more or less likely to gamble on small risks, and whether they are less likely to use inaccuarate rules-of-thumb in financial decision making. results of the project will yield broader impact by giving new evidence on how education may help encourage retirement saving and long-run investments in health and well-being.Past research has established that individuals often behave in ways that inconsistent with some of the key assumptions used in economic models. In particular, they may be time-inconsistent, have attitudes toward rsik that depend on reference points or question framing, and have systematically incorrect beliefs. Such behaviors may explain why some households have inadequate savings for retirement, the sensitivity of demand for annuities to framing, individuals over-insuring against small risks, and investment behavior depending strongly on the past performance of stocks. Previous research has suggested that these kinds of behavior are more common among people with less education. However, the correlation may simply be the result of individual differences that lead people to choose less education. For example, people who value long run benefits in the way predicted by economic models may not just invest more in their retirement savings, but also invest more time and effort in their own education. The research team proposes to use an unusual natural experiment to resolve this puzzle. An overenrolled public college has had to conduct a lottery for enrollment places. Winners enroll at once, others must wait a year before enrolling. The team will use lab experiments and survey data from both groups to study whether the winners (who have more education because of early enrollment) are less likely to exhibit (i) time inconsistency, (ii) small stakes risk aversion, (iii) use of biased heuristics, or (iii) susceptibility to framing effects.