Economic Decision Making: The Role of Expectations, Information and Cognition

描述(申请人提供)：退休时经济资源的相当大的异质性可能部分是由于个人期望的不同以及这些期望如何影响经济决策行为，例如关于退休计划的。然而，人们对个人如何形成对未来事件的预期知之甚少。由于数据不足，研究个体决策的研究人员只能对期望的形成过程做出假设。该项目通过现有的兰德互联网小组收集新的数据，直接研究个人预期的形成过程及其与经济决策的关系。该项目包括实验，以确定信息和不确定性的作用，以及它们与认知能力、动机和个性相关变量在个人如何形成预期和修正预期方面的交互作用，并特别强调对社会保障福利的预期。利用新的数据，这个项目描述了个人对未来社会保障福利和与退休计划相关的其他事件的预期的主观分布，并确定了社会保障福利不同不确定性来源的作用和相对重要性。这个项目试图描述个人如何改变他们对新信息或事件做出反应的预期。这些调查结果将结合在一起，以得出关于在一般目的调查中引起预期的方法学方面的影响，以及关于建立预期形成模型的影响。最后，这个项目将研究预期的修正如何映射到实际行为的调整，并将对预期形成的观察整合到经济决策模型的应用中。提到公共卫生：经济状况与健康之间的密切联系至少有一部分是由于获得保健服务的机会减少，以及资源水平低造成的不健康环境。因此，退休时经济资源的异质性可能会对老年人之间的健康差距产生重要影响。这项研究将提供对社会保障福利和其他未来事件的错误预期如何导致退休后计划不足和经济资源不足，从而导致健康差距的洞察

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The considerable heterogeneity in economic resources at retirement could be partly due to variations in individuals' expectations and how those expectations influence economic decision-making behavior, e.g., with respect to retirement planning. Yet, how individuals form expectations about future events is very little understood. Because of inadequate data, researchers studying individual decision-making have only been able to make assumptions about the expectation formation process. This project collects new data through the existing RAND Internet Panel to study directly the process of individual expectation formation and how it relates to economic decision-making. The project includes experiments to define the role of information and uncertainty and their interaction with cognitive abilities, motivational and personality related variables in how individuals form expectations and revise them, with special emphasis on expectations about Social Security benefits. With the new data, this project describes subjective distributions of individuals' expectations about future Social Security benefits and other events related to retirement planning in cross-section and in panel, and identifies the role and relative importance of the different sources of uncertainty about Social Security benefits. This project seeks to describe how individuals vary in the way they revise their expectations in response to new information or events. The findings will be combined to draw implications with respect to the methodological aspects of eliciting expectations in general purpose surveys and with respect to modeling expectation formation. Finally, this project will examine how revisions in expectations map into adjustments of actual behavior, and integrate observations on expectation formation into applications of models of economic decision-making. Reference to Public Health: At least some of the strong correlation between economic status and health is due to reduced access to health care services and an unhealthy environment which result from low levels of resources. Thus heterogeneity in economic resources at retirement could contribute importantly to health disparities among the elderly. This research will provide insights into how flawed expectations about Social Security benefits and other future events could lead to inadequate planning and inadequate economic resources at retirement with an implication for health disparities