This paper uses linked survey responses and administrative hospital records to examine the accuracy of self-reported medical diagnoses. The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) collects self-reported information on the incidence of heart attacks, strokes and cancer in the past two years....

Controlling for time fixed effects in analyses on longitudinal data by means of timedummy variables has long been a standard tool in every applied econometrician's toolbox. In order to obtain unbiased estimates, time fixed effects are typically put forward to control for macroeconomic shocks and...

We study the impact of media bias on tax compliance. Through a framed laboratory experiment, we assess how the exposure to biased news about government action affects compliance in a repeated taxation game. Subjects treated with positive news are significantly more compliant than the control...

In this paper, we systematically analyze the empirical importance of standard conditions for the validity and generalizability of field experiments: the internal and external overlap and unconfoundedness conditions. We experimentally varied the degree of overlap in disjoint sub-samples from a...

A key theoretical prediction in financial economics is that under risk neutrality and rational expectations a currency's forward rates should form unbiased predictors of future spot rates. Yet scores of empirical studies report negative slope coefficients from regressions of spot rates on...

Cognitive biases distort judgement and adversely impact decision-making, which results in economic inefficiencies. Initial attempts to mitigate these biases met with little success. However, recent studies which used computer games and educational videos to train people to avoid biases (Clegg et...

Despite decades of research on heuristics and biases, empirical evidence on the effect of large incentives – as present in relevant economic decisions – on cognitive biases is scant. This paper tests the effect of incentives on four widely documented biases: base rate neglect, anchoring,...

This paper uses linked survey responses and administrative hospital records to examine the accuracy of self-reported medical diagnoses. The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) collects self-reported information on the incidence of heart attacks, strokes and cancer in the past two years....

We investigate whether estimates of the effect of aid on growth are influenced by authors' careers. We collect data on the careers of 190 authors and apply meta-regression analysis to investigate the impact of authors' age and tenure status on the reported magnitude of aid effectiveness, and on...

A key theoretical prediction in financial economics is that under risk neutrality and rational expectations a currency's forward rates should form unbiased predictors of future spot rates. Yet scores of empirical studies report negative slope coefficients from regressions of spot rates on...

Controlling for time fixed effects in analyses on longitudinal data by means of timedummy variables has long been a standard tool in every applied econometrician's toolbox. In order to obtain unbiased estimates, time fixed effects are typically put forward to control for macroeconomic shocks and...

In this paper, we systematically analyze the empirical importance of standard conditions for the validity and generalizability of field experiments: the internal and external overlap and unconfoundedness conditions. We experimentally varied the degree of overlap in disjoint sub-samples from a...

Existing research has documented the confirmation bias in the domain of politics, but relatively little research has examined the confirmation bias in religion. I developed a novel task in the religious domain and compare confirmation bias evidence to that observed in the political domain. Using...

I present a statistical discrimination model of the labor market in which persistent negative employer biases about the productivity of a group of workers arise through hiring and learning about the group. Bayesian profit-maximizing employers endogenously develop biased beliefs based on their...

This paper explores whether a truth-telling promise can work to reduce the hypothetical bias in preference elicitation. Using an induced value experiment in China with a random nth-price auction, the author finds: 1) Hypothetical bias exists in a random nth-price auction with induced values and...

This paper explores whether a truth-telling promise can work to reduce the hypothetical bias in preference elicitation. Using an induced value experiment in China with a random nthprice auction, the author finds: 1) Hypothetical bias exists in a random nth-price auction with induced values and...

The aim of this study is to link variation in energy cost misperceptions to variation in households' energy consumption. The focus is on two sorts of misperceptions: First, present biased discounting of future energy costs and second, biased energy price beliefs. By running an artefactual field...

This paper introduces macroeconomic forecasters as political agents and suggests that they use their forecasts to influence voting outcomes. We develop a probabilistic voting model in which voters do not have complete information about the future states of the economy and have to rely on...

If we reassess the rationality question under the assumption that the uncertainty of the natural world is largely unquantifiable, where do we end up? In this article the author argues that we arrive at a statistical, normative, and cognitive theory of ecological rationality. The main casualty of...

Viewed through the lens of the prominent two-system model of decision making, behavioral economics is seen as studying the tension between impulses (System 1) and rationality (System 2). In this context, two strategies, "de-biasing" informing agents of their biases and "counter-biasing" using...

Factor structures or interactive effects are convenient devices to incorporate latent variables in panel data models. We consider fixed effect estimation of nonlinear panel single-index models with factor structures in the unobservables, which include logit, probit, ordered probit and Poisson...

We examine partisan bias in inflation expectations. Our dataset includes inflation expectations of the New York Fed's Survey of Consumer Expectations over the period June 2013 to June 2018. The results show that inflation expectations were 0.46 percentage points higher in Republican-dominated...

We study the inference and experimentation problem of an agent in a situation where the outcomes depend on the individual's intrinsic ability and on an external variable. We analyze the mistakes made by decision-makers who hold inaccurate prior beliefs about their ability. Overconfident...

Official statistics measuring the cost of living are known to suffer from several biases because they often do not accurately capture substitution patterns, product entry/exit, and preference shifts. In particular, the latter two biases have been shown to be large on average. This paper shows...

The "true" size of fiscal multipliers is widely debated by economists and policy makers as large (small) multipliers provide arguments to expand (cut) public spending. Within a meta-analytical framework, we ask whether the large observed variance in multiplier estimates can be explained by the...

A key parameter in international economics is the elasticity of substitution between domestic and foreign goods, also called the Armington elasticity. Yet estimates vary widely. We collect 3,524 reported estimates of the elasticity, construct 34 variables that reflect the context in which...

Where should better learning technology (such as machine learning or AI) improve decisions? I develop a model of decision-making in which better learning technology is complementary with experimentation. Noisy, inconsistent decision-making introduces quasi-experimental variation into training...

We examine partisan bias in inflation expectations. Our dataset includes inflation expectations of the New York Fed's Survey of Consumer Expectations over the period June 2013 to June 2018. The results show that inflation expectations were 0.46 percentage points higher in Republican-dominated...

This paper examines how skill-biased growth can generate economic fragmentation (income disparities) that give rise to social fragmentation (the adoption of increasingly incompatible social identities and values), which generate political fragmentation (the adoption of increasingly incompatible...