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

描述（由申请人提供）：退休时经济资源的巨大异质性可能部分是由于个人期望的变化以及这些期望如何影响经济决策行为，例如，关于退休计划。然而，人们对个人如何形成对未来事件的预期却知之甚少。由于数据不足，研究个体决策的研究人员只能对期望形成过程做出假设。本项目通过现有的兰德互联网小组收集新数据，直接研究个人期望形成的过程及其与经济决策的关系。该项目包括定义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体如何形成期望和修改期望中的相互作用的实验，特别强调对社会保障福利的期望。利用新数据，本项目在横断面和面板中描述了个人对未来社会保障福利和其他与退休计划有关的事件的主观预期分布，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体在面对新信息或新事件时如何改变他们的期望。将把这些调查结果结合起来，就一般目的调查中引起期望的方法方面和对期望形成的建模提出影响。最后，本项目将研究预期的修正如何映射到实际行为的调整中，并将对预期形成的观察整合到经济决策模型的应用中。提及公共卫生：经济地位与健康之间的密切联系至少在一定程度上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在很大程度上导致老年人之间的健康差异。这项研究将深入了解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时计划不足和经济资源不足，从而对健康差距产生影响

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