Collaborative Research: Social versus individual learning in life cycle consumption and saving

这个项目通过实验来检验人们是否可以通过观察和/或别人的建议来学习如何更好地完成这些任务。受到审查的假设是由大量的文献在社会学和心理学学科的观察，社会和合作学习的一个方面，和组的过程和性能的另一方面。研究的任务来自当代经济文献的消费和储蓄。实验的目的是确定：（a）在这些重要的经济环境中是否会发生社会学习;（B）什么因素决定了这种学习的发生和/或强度;以及（c）这种学习与个人重复学习相比如何。生命周期消费和储蓄任务（以下简称LCCS任务）在宏观经济理论中起着核心作用，也是一些微观经济领域的研究对象。 实验研究表明，人们并没有最佳地执行LCCS任务。虽然在实验环境中，一些个体的学习和适应可能会随着LCCS任务的个体重复而发生，但这与外部世界（实验室外的世界）中的LCCS任务的相关性值得怀疑，因为根据定义，它们在外部世界中的任何代理人的一生中只遇到一次。然而，人们可以从观察（或建议）其他人谁已经执行（或正在执行）类似的任务。也就是说，有一个关于LCCS任务的社会学习的可能性，即使通过重复的个人学习是不可能的。类似的评论适用于许多其他重要的个人决策任务，就其性质而言，一生中只遇到一次。但很少有像LCCS任务那样重要、普遍或复杂的。更广泛的影响：实验主义者通常在实验设计中建立重复的任务。这是一个有问题的过程，只要：（a）被分析的决策问题是一个独特的，一生只有一次的任务，在外部世界，如LCCS任务;（B）实验者希望她的结果是外部有效的。然而，如果社会学习发生在这样的任务中，并且社会学习与个人学习相比很好，那么这个过程就会受到尊重，因为它可以被视为社会学习的“实验室替代品”，而社会学习将在自然发生的环境中发生。因此，本研究将为实验经济学的方法论基础增添有益的知识。

This project experimentally examines whether people can learn how to perform these tasks better through observation of, and/or advice from, other people. The hypotheses under scrutiny are motivated by a large literature in sociological and psychological disciplines concerning observational, social and cooperative learning on the one hand, and group processes and performance on the other. The tasks studied are drawn from the contemporary economic literature on consumption and saving. The purpose of the experiments is to determine: (a) Whether social learning can occur in these important economic settings; (b) what factors govern the occurrence and/or strength of this learning; and (c) how such learning compares to individual learning from individual repetition.Intellectual Merit: The life-cycle consumption and saving task (hereafter LCCS task) plays a central role in macroeconomic theory, and is also an intense object of study in several microeconomic areas. Experimental examinations suggest that people do not perform LCCS tasks optimally. And while it is possible that some individual learning and adaptation could take place with individual repetition of LCCS tasks in an experimental setting, this is of questionable relevance to LCCS tasks in the external world (the world outside the lab) since, by definition, they are only encountered once in their entirety over any agent's lifetime in the external world. However, people may learn from observation of (or advice from) other people who have performed (or are performing) similar tasks. That is, there is a possibility of social learning about LCCS tasks, even though individual learning through repetition is impossible. Similar remarks apply to many other important individual decision making tasks that are, by their nature, only encountered once in a lifetime. But few are as important, ubiquitous or complex as the LCCS task.Broader Impact: Experimentalists commonly build repetition of tasks into experimental designs. This is a questionable procedure whenever: (a) The decision problem under analysis is a unique, once-over-a-lifetime task in the external world, such as the LCCS task; and (b) the experimenter wishes her results to be externally valid. However, if social learning occurs for such tasks, and social learning compares well with individual learning, then the procedure gains in respectability since it may be regarded as a "laboratory substitute" for the social learning that would take place in naturally occurring settings. So this research will add useful knowledge to the methodological base of experimental economics.