DRU: Context, Experience, and Market Anomalies: Behavioral and Neural Evidence

新古典经济理论是几乎所有现代经济政策分析的基础。然而，在经济决策的实验室实验中，对该理论标准假设的几个重要偏差已经得到了有力的证明。两种重要的行为偏差是“禀赋效应”和利他主义/社会偏好的普遍表现。一个由经济学、心理学和神经学的多学科研究人员组成的团队将检查这些实验结果的来源。在本研究中，用于检测这些偏差的经济决策实验（包括实验室和现场处理）将辅以神经成像技术，以深入了解行为反应背后的神经机制。将在禀赋效应的背景下检验的一个重要假设是，该效应是否在竞争性交易环境中存在。为了验证这一假设，将使用一个具有不同程度经验的主题池作为现实市场中的交易者。神经成像技术将用于检查有经验和没有经验的受试者的神经反应。实验对象还将被跟踪数年，以检查行为模式的持久性，以及在调查期间获得的市场经验是否反映在神经激活模式中。为了分离实验室游戏中显示的社会偏好/利他主义的来源，将使用具有不同给予情境的实验设计来测试观察到的行为反应的竞争解释。神经影像学将在区分不同假设和预测新情况下的行为方面发挥至关重要的作用。为了收集具有高空间和时间精度的神经测量，将使用功能磁共振成像和事件相关脑电图（ER-EEG或ERP）技术，以便更全面地了解结合这两种测量方式所获得的收益。预计这项研究将通过几个渠道产生更广泛的影响。本研究所研究的经济决策情境在日常生活中是普遍存在的。评估市场经验和环境变化对决策的影响是将行为理论的预测领域扩展到实验室之外的必要步骤。该项目的多学科性质预计将促进经济、心理学和神经学/神经科学学科之间的知识流动，并将培养（博士后、研究生和本科生水平的）学员，他们将进一步促进这些领域之间的交流。

Neoclassical economic theory underlies almost all modern economic policy analyses. Nevertheless, several important deviations from standard assumptions of the theory have been robustly documented in laboratory experiments on economic decision-making. Two such important behavioral deviations are the "endowment effect" and the prevalent display of altruism/social preferences. A multidisciplinary team of researchers from economics, psychology, and neurology will examine the sources of these experimental findings. In this research, the economic decision-making experiments - spanning both laboratory and field treatments - used to detect these deviations will be complemented by neuroimaging techniques to provide insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the behavioral responses. An important hypothesis that will be tested in the context of the endowment effect is whether the effect survives in competitive trading settings. To test this hypothesis, a subject pool with varying degrees of experience as traders in real-world markets will be utilized. Neuroimaging techniques will be used to examine the neural responses of experienced versus inexperienced subjects. The experimental subjects will also be tracked over the course of several years to examine the persistence of behavioral patterns, and whether market experience attained during the survey period is reflected in neural activation patterns. In order to isolate the sources of social preferences/altruism displayed in laboratory games, an experimental design with variations in giving contexts will be used to test among competing explanations for the observed behavioral responses. Neuroimaging will play a crucial role in discriminating between alternative hypotheses and predicting behavior in novel situations. To collect neural measurements with high spatial and temporal accuracy, both fMRI and event-related electroencephalography (ER-EEG or ERP) techniques will be utilized, allowing a more complete understanding of the gains achieved from combining these two measurement modalities. The research is expected to have broader impact through several channels. The economic decision-making contexts studied in the research are ubiquitous in daily life. Assessing the effects of market experience and context variations on decision-making are necessary steps to extend the predictive domain of behavioral theories beyond the laboratory. The multidisciplinary nature of the project is expected to promote the flow of knowledge across the economic, psychology, and neurology/neuroscience disciplines, and will produce trainees (at the post-doc, graduate and undergraduate levels) who will further the communication between these fields.