Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Effect of Access on Beliefs

尽管政府、学术界和决策者都认同教育对社会成果的巨大益处，但对贫困人口的教育投资仍然很低。经济学研究人员引用的一个原因是，与数据估计相比，穷人对教育价值的期望较低。另一个可能的解释是心理上的。社会学研究发现，贫困家庭对教育未来价值的看法更为悲观，原因是学校质量低下、经济拮据和种族歧视等障碍。也许最引人注目的是，最近的实证研究发现，向穷人提供获得资源的机会，会提高他们对教育价值的期望，尽管没有提供有关教育价值本身的信息。基于这些发现，一种可能的理论是，低期望有助于个人应对低投资机会。人们不会为一项可能改变人生的投资机会渺茫而哀叹，而是通过低估它的价值而感觉更好，这一理论被称为“酸葡萄效应”。这个项目的目标是利用实验室设置的经济工具来探索这种影响，以及更广泛的访问和信仰之间的关系。该实验室提供了一个明确的方法论优势，因为迄今为止的实证研究可能存在混淆。这一建议的智力价值在于试图用一种新颖的心理直觉来研究现实世界的问题，这种直觉可以用严格的理论来构建，并通过实验方法进行调查。研究议程以模糊决策理论为基础，并可能记录对（主观）预期效用理论的新违反。研究议程做出了一些重要贡献，并可能产生更广泛的影响。探索基于机会的信念可以增加我们对教育回报的感知（而不是估计）信念是如何形成的理解，这是教育决策的一个重要决定因素。此外，以获取为基础的信念可能是低获取和使人们陷入贫困的投资循环的根源。最后，他们将为扩大公共产品获取的社会项目的有效性提出一条新的途径，即乐观信念可能发挥重要作用。最终，进一步了解关于投资回报的主观信念是如何形成的研究可以帮助我们在不确定性下创建更好的决策模型，并为各种背景下的政策制定者提供信息。

Although governments, academics and policy-makers agree about the large benefits of education in societal outcomes, investment in education amongst the poor remains low. One reason, cited by researchers in economics, is that poor people have low expectations about the value of education when compared to estimates from data. Another potential explanation is psychological. Work in sociology finds that poor families have more pessimistic outlooks on the future value of education due to obstacles like low quality schools, larger financial constraints and racial discrimination. Perhaps most striking, recent empirical studies find that providing poor people access to resources increases their expectations on the value of education, despite no information being provided about the value per se.Building on these findings, one possible theory is that low expectations help individuals cope with low access to an investment. Rather than lamenting a small chance to make a potentially life-changing investment, individuals feel better by underestimating its value, a theory called "the sour grapes effect". The goal in this project is to utilize the economic tools of a laboratory setting to explore this effect, and the relationship between access and beliefs more broadly. The lab provides a clear methodological advantage as empirical studies to date suffer from likely confounds.The intellectual merit of this proposal lies in attempting to study a real-world problem with a novel psychological intuition that can be framed using rigorous theory and investigated through experimental methodologies. The research agenda is grounded in the theory of decision-making under ambiguity and may document a new violation of (Subjective) Expected Utility theory.The research agenda makes some important contributions and has potentially broader impacts. Exploring the access-based beliefs could increase our understanding of how perceived (not estimated) beliefs of the returns to education are formed, an important determinant of schooling decisions. Furthermore, access-based beliefs may be the source of a cycle of low access, and investment that traps people in poverty. Lastly, they would suggest a novel pathway for the efficacy of social programs that expand access to public goods, namely that optimistic beliefs may play an important role. Ultimately, research that furthers our knowledge on how subjective beliefs on the returns to investment are formed can help create better models of decision-making under uncertainty and inform policy-makers in a variety of contexts.