Using Neurometric Data To Measure Economic Values in Private and Social Exchange Situations

“该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。“企业、政府和科学家一直在努力弄清楚人们最想要什么样的商品和服务，并量化它们的价值。在经济学中，用来做这件事的主要技术是对人们以前购买过的东西进行统计分析，以便猜测如果人们有更多的支出，如果价格上涨或下跌，或者如果推出类似的产品，购买可能会发生什么变化。然而，这种方法在预测全新产品和不在市场上交易的商品（特别是使每个人受益的公共商品，如清洁空气）的价值方面用处有限。当人们在选择时，一个复杂的认知和生物过程是这些选择的基础。拟议中的研究使用认知神经科学的实证工具来衡量这些过程的各个方面时，实验对象作出实际的消费品的选择。测量方法将包括大脑成像、视觉注意力的眼动追踪和反应速度。我们的目标是使用这些指标来推断人们的价值，以了解选择的神经基础，并比其他指标更准确地预测实际选择。

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5)."Firms, governments, and scientists are constantly striving to figure out what goods and services people want most and quantify their worth. The main technique used to do this in economics is to statistically analyze data on what people have bought before, in order to guess how purchases might change if people have more to spend, if prices rise or fall, or if similar products are introduced. However, this method is of limited use in forecasting the value of brand new products, and goods that are not traded in markets (particularly public goods which benefit everyone, such as clean air.)When people are choosing, a complex cognitive and biological process underlies those choices. The proposed research uses empirical tools from cognitive neuroscience to measure aspects of these processes when experimental subjects make actual choices of consumer goods. Measures will include brain imaging, eyetracking of visual attention, and speed of responses. The goal is to use these measures to infer what people value, in order to understand the neural foundation of choice and to predict actual choices more accurately than other measures can.