Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant in Economics: Beliefs and Preferences: An Experimental Investigation of Innovation

为了更好地理解个人决策，经济学家越来越认识到主观预期的重要性以及将信念和偏好分开的必要性。这个练习在行为看起来令人困惑的环境中很有用-例如，创业。新企业的高失败率是有据可查的，但个人继续放弃有薪就业，开办自己的企业。该项目使用实验室实验来解开信念和偏好，以了解为什么个人倾向于高估高回报结果的可能性。在创业等环境中，人们通常会认为，一个人高估了成功的可能性，因为他高估了自己的能力。然而，也有可能他只是乐观，相信好事更有可能发生。我们从乐观主义中分离出对绩效的信念，以检验这两者是独立的这一普遍假设，并询问在多大程度上高估成功的概率是由绩效信念与乐观主义驱动的。我们发现，乐观和业绩高估驱动个人高估成功的可能性，然而，女性比男性更乐观。我们还发现，业绩高估和乐观是高度相关的--乐观的人也更有可能高估自己的业绩。接下来，我们将研究乐观风险偏好与绩效高估之间的关系，并检验个体乐观情绪是否随风险的变化而变化。我们采用了2x2（支付x绩效）的受试者内实验设计，要求受试者报告他们对已知分布的概率事件的信念，并通过二次评分规则激励他们的准确性。为了识别乐观，支付处理将从分布中随机抽取的结果映射到货币支付，改变指定结果是否是有利的支付。如果一个被试认为一个结果在回报有利的时候比在回报不利的时候更有可能发生，那么他就是乐观的。为了确定性能高估的性能处理不同，是否受试者的表现对智商问题可以影响的分布或分布是否是由实验者外生。当一个被试正确地回答了一个智商问题，没有反馈，他面临着一个更好的分布在随机优势的意义上。 一个被试高估自己表现的程度，是通过他对自己处于比实际表现更好的分布中的概率所赋予的权重来衡量的。由于二次评分规则只有在假设风险中性和期望效用给出的偏好的情况下才是激励相容的，因此我们将通过引出风险态度并联合估计风险偏好和主观概率来纠正违反这些假设的行为。我们还将通过改变支付处理中诱导偏好的强度来研究乐观信念和偏好之间关系的性质。

To better understand individual decision-making, economists have increasingly recognized the importance of subjective expectations and the necessity of disentangling beliefs and preferences. This exercise is useful in settings where behavior appears puzzling--for example, entrepreneurship. The high failure rate of new businesses is well-documented and yet individuals continue to forego paid employment to open their own business. This project uses laboratory experiments to disentangle beliefs and preferences to understand why individuals tend to overestimate the probability of high payoff outcomes. In settings, such as entrepreneurship, it is common to assume that an individual overestimates the probability of success because he overestimates his abilities. However, it is also possible that he is simply optimistic and believes good things are more likely to occur. We isolate beliefs about performance from optimism to test the prevailing assumption that the two are independent and to ask to what extent overestimation of the probability of success is driven by performance beliefs versus optimism. We find that both optimism and performance overestimation drive individuals to overestimate the probability of success; however, women are driven more by optimism than men. We also find that performance overestimation and optimism are highly correlated--individuals who are optimistic are also more likely to overestimate their performance. Next, we will examine the relationship between preferences for risk-taking on optimism and performance overestimation, as well as test whether individual optimism varies as the stakes involved change.We employ a 2x2 (Payment x Performance) within-subject experimental design, where subjects are asked to report their beliefs about probabilistic events with known distributions and are incentivized for their accuracy via the quadratic scoring rule. To identify optimism, the payment treatment maps outcomes of a random draw from the distribution to monetary payoffs, varying whether specified outcomes are payoff favorable. A subject is optimistic if a he believes an outcome is more likely to occur when the outcome is payoff favorable than when it is not. To identify performance overestimation the performance treatment varies whether the subject's performance on IQ questions can affect the distribution or whether the distribution is exogenously given by the experimenter. When a subject answers an IQ question correctly, without feedback, he is facing a better distribution in the sense of stochastic dominance. The extent to which a subject overestimates his performance is measured by the weight he puts on the probability of being in a better distribution than his performance actually warrants. Because the quadratic scoring rule is only incentive compatible assuming risk-neutrality and preferences given by expected utility, we will correct for violations of these assumptions by eliciting risk attitudes and jointly estimating risk preferences and subjective probabilities. We will also examine the nature of the relationship between optimistic beliefs and preferences by varying the intensity of the induced preference in the payment treatment.