Informational Asymmetries and Observational Learning in Search

As economics modeling moves from super rational decision makers to considering boundedly rational agents, some economic problems deserve a second look. This paper studies the effects of learning on the efficiency of search. Once learning is taken into account, the structure of information flow becomes important. In particular, I highlight the truncated information structure in the search problem. Agents stop searching once a sufficiently attractive price is found. Therefore, they observe the performance of shorter searches, but do not directly observe the performance of longer searches. I design and conduct an experiment to test the hypothesis that this asymmetric flow of information leads agents to search too little. I find strong evidence in its favor. This suggests that in the presence of learning, the provision of a more symmetric information structure will make search more efficient.JEL Classification: C91, D83     

Overcoming Learning Aversion in Evaluating and Managing Uncertain Risks

Decision biases can distort cost‐benefit evaluations of uncertain risks, leading to risk management policy decisions with predictably high retrospective regret. We argue that well‐documented decision biases encourage learning aversion, or predictably suboptimal learning and premature decision making in the face of high uncertainty about the costs, risks, and benefits of proposed changes. Biases such as narrow framing, overconfidence, confirmation bias, optimism bias, ambiguity aversion, and hyperbolic discounting of the immediate costs and delayed benefits of learning, contribute to deficient individual and group learning, avoidance of information seeking, underestimation of the value of further information, and hence needlessly inaccurate risk‐cost‐benefit estimates and suboptimal risk management decisions. In practice, such biases can create predictable regret in selection of potential risk‐reducing regulations. Low‐regret learning strategies based on computational reinforcement learning models can potentially overcome some of these suboptimal decision processes by replacing aversion to uncertain probabilities with actions calculated to balance exploration (deliberate experimentation and uncertainty reduction) and exploitation (taking actions to maximize the sum of expected immediate reward, expected discounted future reward, and value of information). We discuss the proposed framework for understanding and overcoming learning aversion and for implementing low‐regret learning strategies using regulation of air pollutants with uncertain health effects as an example.     

泰勒规则在中国的实证检验及拓展

文章介绍了泰勒规则,即在产生、内涵、发展的基础上,利用Lawrence模型将汇率因素引入,构建了开放经济条件下的前瞻性泰勒规则。实证结果表明:泰勒规则能够为中国货币政策提供一个很好的参照系;相对于物价稳定目标,央行更关注经济增长;将微观主体的预期和汇率因素引入到货币政策时,央行对利率的敏感性增强;继续推动利率和汇率体制改革能更有效地提高泰勒规则的解释力;“前瞻性泰勒规则”能提高中国货币政策的透明度。     

AS A YOUNG CHILD’S PARENT DIES: CONCEPTUALIZING AND CONSTRUCTING PREVENTIVE INTERVENTIONS

The impending death of a parent with young children in the home presents a family with often overwhelming challenges. Social workers and other mental health professionals are in a position to assist such families if they understand the misperceptions, beliefs and veiled presentation of affect in children. The framing of proposed interventions in cognitive, affective and behavioral spheres will be discussed. Parent guidance, critical to the overall success of the intervention, is presented along with many clinical examples and vignettes.     

证券市场投资者处置效应理论与实证研究综述

处置效应是一种典型的投资者行为偏差,目前国外学者对其进行了广泛的研究,形成了很多观点和结论。文章从处置效应实证研究、成因和度量方法三方面对国内外现有研究成果进行了梳理,指出国内的相关研究在方法上存在一定局限性,在研究成果上存在一些空白,并在此基础上对未来研究前景进行了展望。     

大学生亲情关系中的负债心理探析

随着大学生心理的成熟和法律意识的增强,独立意识也越来越强,但由于他们在上学期间还不能实现完全的独立,因此在亲情关系上对支持自己上学的亲人产生了负债心理。本文就大学生亲情关系中负债心理的形成以及如何引导教育进行了探析。     

On the Preference to Avoid Ex Post Inventory Errors

The value of demand information underlies many supply chain strategies that aim at better matching supply and demand. This study reports on the results of a laboratory experiment designed to estimate the behavioral value of demand information. Relative to the commonly assumed benchmark of a rational risk‐neutral decision maker, we find that decision makers are consistently willing to pay too much for the option to eliminate the risk of supply not matching demand. Contrary to intuition, we show that risk aversion does not explain this result. We posit that demand information provides behavioral value because it mitigates regret from ex post inventory errors.     

Minimax,information and ultrapessimism

Discussing the foundations of the minimax principle, Savage (1954) argued that it is utterly untenable for statistics because it is ultrapessimistic when applied to negative income, but claimed that such objection is not relevant when the principle is applied to regret. In this paper I rebut the latter claim. I first present an example where ultrapessimism, as Savage understood it, applies to minimax regret but not to minimax negative income. Then, for a sequential decision problems with two terminal acts and a finite number of states of nature, I give necessary and sufficient conditions for a decision rule to be ultrapessimistic, and show that for every payoff table with at least three states, be it in regret form or not, there exist an experiment such that the minimax rule is ultrapessimistic. I conclude with some more general remarks on information and the value of experimentation for a minimax agent.     

Probability and juxtaposition effects: An experimental investigation of the common ratio effect

Several theories explain the common ratio effect as a probability effect resulting from properties of individuals' preference orderings over probability distributions of consequences. In contrast, regret theory explains it as the result of changes in the juxtaposition of consequences in the action/state matrix. This article reports an experiment that allowed probability effects and juxtaposition effects to be separately identified for some common ratio problems, some of which involved real gains and others, real losses. The main finding is that changes in the juxtaposition of consequences have systematic effects on choices in the direction predicted by regret theory.University of East Anglia     

Testing for juxtaposition and event-splitting effects

Regret theory predicts that choices over prospects will be systematically influenced by the juxtaposition of outcomes in the payoff matrix. Experiments have found apparent juxtaposition effects of this kind. However, these experiments have not controlled for event-splitting effects (ESEs), by which the subjective weight given to an outcome depends on the number of states of the world in which it occurs, as well as on their combined probability. An experiment is reported that tests independently for juxtaposition effects and ESEs. The results suggest that the apparent juxtaposition effects found in previous experiments are largely due to ESEs.The research reported in this article was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK (award numbers R 00 23 2236 and R 000 23 2269) and by the Economics Research Centre of the University of East Anglia. We are grateful to Judith Mehta for help in carrying out the experiments, and to the editor and two anonymous referees for valuable comments. The idea that our previous experiments might have revealed event-splitting effects rather than juxtaposition effects was first suggested to us by Stephen Davies.