Chetan Dave

Eliciting Risk Preferences: When is Simple Better?

We study the estimation of risk aversion preferences with experimental data. The focus is on the trade-offs that arise when choosing between two different elicitation methods that have different degrees of difficulty for subjects. We analyze how and when the simpler, but coarser, elicitation method may be preferred to the more complex, but finer, one. Results indicate that the more complex measure has an overall superior predictive accuracy, but its downside is that subjects exhibit noisier behavior; conversely, the simpler measure has the opposite costs and benefits. Our main result is that subjects’ numerical skills can help better assess this tradeoff: the simpler task may be preferred when subjects exhibit low numeracy as it generates less noisy behavior but similar predictive accuracy than the more complex task; conversely, for subjects with higher numerical skills, the greater predictive accuracy of the more complex task more than outweighs the larger noise. We explore timeconsistency and preference heterogeneity under the two methods and provide methodological suggestions for future work.

Are Investment Expectations Rational, Adaptive or Regressive?

A unique previously unavailable dataset is employed to study the nature of expectations formed by manufacturing plants as they plan their own capital expenditures. Both conventional rational expectations and adaptive expectations hypotheses are found to be inconsistent with the data, which instead favor a regressive expectations formation process. These results, obtained using real-world data on plants, further develop the growing recent literature on survey expectations and the information about economic models that can be gleaned from them.

Nosy Preferences, Benevolence, and Efficiency

We explore the implications of “nosy” preferences—when individuals have rankings over the specific actions of others—using recent theoretical results in the behavioral economics literature. Our model jointly captures preference interdependence over utilities (benevolence) and actions (nosiness). We apply the model to two well-known environments. The first is a classic social choice problem; the second is a model of relative consumption concerns. For the former we characterize the existence of the impossibility once the social choice problem has been modeled as a behavioral game. For the latter we characterize when the negative externality arising from relative consumption concerns can be overcome without a policy intervention.

Factors Affecting the Length of Time a Jury Deliberates: Case Characteristics and Jury Composition

We examine the time it takes to reach a verdict (deliberation time) using a unique dataset on the deliberation times of actual juries in criminal and civil cases. Duration model results indicate that case complexity, the unanimity of verdicts and the process of voir dire affect deliberation times, whereas jury size, prior juror experience and the gender composition of juries are not significant correlates. The results shed empirical light on an important correlate of trial accuracy using real-world data, in contrast to previous research that employed mock jury data.

Confirmation bias with motivated beliefs

We investigate whether the confirmation bias is mitigated in signal-extraction environments by outside financial interests. We include a background strategic consideration leading to ‘motivated beliefs’ for people in one role, as they receive higher equilibrium payoffs in a background game in one of two states, while people in the other role receive the same equilibrium payoffs in both. We find systematic differences in beliefs and our results suggest that players with motivated beliefs deviate less from Bayesian updating. However, such players still exhibit a confirmation bias in that they place additional weight on confirming information, in contrast to Bayesians.