Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Convex Preferences Over Lotteries

该奖项资助coPI将作为其博士论文的一部分进行的研究。他将在实验室环境中进行决策实验。其目的是测试参与者是否以经济理论预测的特定方式行事。coPI将使用一种新的实验设计来测试行为经济学中使用的不同风险选择模型的假设。这种新设计具有更大的功率，并且不需要其他实验设计所需的特定假设。这些实验可以适用于调查各种各样的问题，从随着时间的推移做出决策到利他主义对经济决策的影响。该项目将帮助我们更好地了解人们如何做出重要的经济决策。研究结果可以提高我们对如何鼓励美国人为退休做计划和为社区做贡献的理解。该项目旨在测试风险下决策的竞争理论，这些理论是标准预期效用理论的替代品。coPI计划使用一个启发和测试程序来获得凸彩票空间的选择。这种设计将使他能够区分相互竞争的理论。该设计消除了概率单纯形中无差异曲线的凸下围集。这是可行的，因为在这个空间中，可以在具有“预算线”的概率单纯形中研究对彩票的偏好的许多属性。实验将测试，看看是否代理严格喜欢更多的奖品，以较少的奖品，因此，他们将提供新的证据，是否严格准凹是一个合理的假设，对个人的喜好超过lotterys.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

This award funds research that the coPI will undertake as part of his doctoral dissertation. He will conduct decision making experiments in a laboratory environment. The goal is to test whether the participants behave in the specific ways predicted by economic theory. The coPI will use a new experimental design to test hypotheses drawn from different models of choice under risk that are used in behavioral economics. This new design has more power and does not require specific assumptions that are needed by other experimental designs. The experiments can be adapted to investigate a wide variety of issues, from decision making over time to the effect of altruism on economic decisions. The project will help us better understand how people make important economic decisions. The results could improve our understanding of how to encourage Americans to plan for retirement and contribute to their communities.The project seeks to test competing theories of decision making under risk, theories that are alternatives to the standard expected utility theory. The coPI plans to use an elicitation and testing procedure to acquire choices from a convex lottery space. The design will allow him to discriminate between competing theories. The design elicits the convex lower contour set of indifference curves in the probability simplex. This works because many properties of preferences over lotteries can be studied in the probability simplex with "budget lines" in this space. The experiments will test to see whether or not agents strictly prefer more prizes to fewer prizes, and therefore they will provide new evidence on whether or not strict quasiconcavity is a reasonable assumption on individual preferences over lotteries.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.