The Sub-proportionality of Subjective Probability Weighting in Poker
by William Clark Abstract This study uses Texas Hold’em poker to investigate decision making under uncertainty and the concept of probability weighting, where individuals may overvalue or undervalue uncertain outcomes. I conduct an experiment to assess Cumulative Prospect Theory’s relevance to subjective probabilities in poker by simplifying the game to compare complex and simple gamble […]
Heterogeneity in Mortgage Refinancing
By Julia Wu Abstract Many households who would benefit from and are eligible to refinance their mortgages fail to do so. A recent literature has demonstrated a significant degree of heterogeneity in the propensity to refinance across various dimensions, yet much heterogeneity is left unexplained. In this paper, I use a clustering regression to characterize […]
Economic Situations and Social Distance: Taxation and Donation
by Alexander Brandt Abstract: This experimental study evaluated the effects of two common economic situations – taxation and donation – on the social distance between participants in the situations, an original effect of interest that is the opposite of prior research. This study employed a novel survey framework, in which subjects gave money to others […]
Does Media Coverage of Sexual Assault Cases Cause Victims to Go to the Police? Evidence from FBI Data and Google Trends
By Harry Elworthy This paper investigates the effect that national news coverage of prominent sexual assaults has on the reporting decisions of sexual assault victims. Estimates are based on time series data of reports made to police stations in the US from 2008 to 2016 and Google Trends data of search volume, along with an […]
The Effects of Prevention and Treatment Interventions in a Microeconomic Model of HIV Transmission
By Allison Stashko A rational choice-based model for sexual transmission of HIV demonstrates the behavioral and epidemiological effects of public health interventions. Susceptible individuals choose to protect or expose, both responding to and determining HIV prevalence. Interventions are modeled as exogenous shocks to the cost of protection, treatment coverage, and treatment quality. A prevention intervention […]
Do Teenagers Exhibit Rational Expectations Regarding Mortality, Fertility and Education Outcomes?
By Nikolay Braykov Microeconomic models often use the Rational Expectation Hypothesis (REH) instead of including expectation data. This paper examines the validity of the REH using subjective probability questions about mortality, fertility and education outcomes from panel data. First, I ask whether expectations are accurate and homogenous at the individual level; I find substantial forecast […]
