Essays on Reference-Dependent Preferences PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Essays on Reference-Dependent Preferences PDF full book. Access full book title Essays on Reference-Dependent Preferences by Rosario Claudia Macera Parra. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Rosario Claudia Macera Parra
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 182
Get Book Here
Book Description
This dissertation consists of two chapters exploring the economic implications of reference-dependent preferences over incentive design and belief formation. The first chapter studies the intertemporal allocation of incentives in a repeated moral hazard model. Beside consumption utility, reference-dependent agents experience utility from changes in their expectations about present and future income caused by the performance measure realization. In contrast to the prediction with classical preferences but consistent with real-world contracts, this paper shows that if consumption utility is not too concave and if changes in expectations about present income carries sufficiently larger weight in utility than changes in expectations about future income, the optimal contract defers all present incentives into future payments by setting a present fixed wage. Despite this prediction, I further prove that several standard features of the contract with classical preferences--no rents to the agent, conditions to achieve first-best cost and non-optimality of random contracts--still hold. The second chapter studies the temporal path of subjective beliefs when a reference-dependent agent who experiences standard anticipatory utility and utility from changes in these anticipatory feelings waits T periods for a binary outcome realization. Following the optimal beliefs literature, in each period the agent chooses a belief about her likelihood of success to maximize her intertemporal utility. Consistent with the empirical evidence, the model predicts that optimism decreases as the pay-off date approaches if the outcome is important enough or if the agent is sufficiently loss averse. Intuitively, when the pay-off date is distant disappointment is less salient than the joy of hoping favorable outcomes; as the realization date gets closer, however, the threat of disappointment becomes important. Applying the model to the optimal timing of productivity bonuses, I find these should be granted as frequently as possible because optimism acts as a non-pecuniary motivator that allows the principal to induce the desired effort path at a cheaper expected cost.
Author: Rosario Claudia Macera Parra
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 182
Get Book Here
Book Description
This dissertation consists of two chapters exploring the economic implications of reference-dependent preferences over incentive design and belief formation. The first chapter studies the intertemporal allocation of incentives in a repeated moral hazard model. Beside consumption utility, reference-dependent agents experience utility from changes in their expectations about present and future income caused by the performance measure realization. In contrast to the prediction with classical preferences but consistent with real-world contracts, this paper shows that if consumption utility is not too concave and if changes in expectations about present income carries sufficiently larger weight in utility than changes in expectations about future income, the optimal contract defers all present incentives into future payments by setting a present fixed wage. Despite this prediction, I further prove that several standard features of the contract with classical preferences--no rents to the agent, conditions to achieve first-best cost and non-optimality of random contracts--still hold. The second chapter studies the temporal path of subjective beliefs when a reference-dependent agent who experiences standard anticipatory utility and utility from changes in these anticipatory feelings waits T periods for a binary outcome realization. Following the optimal beliefs literature, in each period the agent chooses a belief about her likelihood of success to maximize her intertemporal utility. Consistent with the empirical evidence, the model predicts that optimism decreases as the pay-off date approaches if the outcome is important enough or if the agent is sufficiently loss averse. Intuitively, when the pay-off date is distant disappointment is less salient than the joy of hoping favorable outcomes; as the realization date gets closer, however, the threat of disappointment becomes important. Applying the model to the optimal timing of productivity bonuses, I find these should be granted as frequently as possible because optimism acts as a non-pecuniary motivator that allows the principal to induce the desired effort path at a cheaper expected cost.
Author: Gao Mingjuan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Janos Zsiros
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Get Book Here
Book Description
This dissertation consists of two distinct chapters that answer questions in behavioral economics about the relationship between labor supply and reference points. Each chapter is divided into two parts. The first part of the first chapter proposes the theoretical background to better understand labor supply decisions of workers with multiple reference points. The second part contains empirical results from a laboratory experiment. The second chapter analyzes a classical contract theory problem with agents who have non-standard, reference dependent, preferences. The first part of the second chapter analyzes the principal-agent model under full information, while the second part of the chapter introduces uncertainty into the model. The first essay uses a real effort experiment to test the predictions of models with expectation-based and history-based reference points. For the expectationbased reference point, an agent cares about outcomes relative to her expectation, and she experiences a loss in utility if the actual outcome is below her expectation. For the history-based reference point, an agent evaluates her actual outcome compared to an outcome that she had in the past, and she experiences a loss in utility if the actual outcome is below the one from the past. In the experiment, I manipulate participants' past earnings exogenously to establish a history-based reference point and manipulate expectations about future earnings to establish an expectation-based reference point. Consistent with the model's predictions, I found evidence of both kinds of reference points. Subjects work significantly more in the high expectation treatment; on average, they earn $1.1 more (a marginal effect of 18.2%) in the high expectation treatment compared to the average earnings of $6.03 in the low expectation treatment. Subjects in the high history treatment earn $0.46 more (a marginal effect of 7.2%) compared to the average earnings of $6.35 in the low history treatment. The sign of the effect is in line with the main model's prediction for effort level, but the size of the effect is not significantly different from zero due to the low power of the test. The second essay analyzes a principal-agent model with an agent who has reference-dependent preferences with exogenously given reference point over either money or effort level. I find that the optimal effort level, designed by the principal, does not depend on the reference salary. I show that employers with projects where effort is crucial hire agents with high reference points or push up the reference points of agents whose initial reference point is low. Finally, I discuss the predictions of the model for matching between employers and workers based on workers' reference dependence. I show that employers with projects where effort is crucial hire agents with high reference points or push up the reference points of agents whose initial reference point is low. The last part of the essay presents a theoretical model, in which the principal cannot observe the effort level produced by the agent, and is thus unable to make the optimal wage contract depend upon it. I analyze the Lagrangian corresponding to the problem with uncertainty and I derive conditions for the optimal wage contract and optimal effort level.
Author: Evelyn Stommel
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3658006358
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 229
Get Book Here
Book Description
Most of our daily decisions are made under uncertainty and risk, without complete information about all relevant aspects. We all constantly make such decisions, from the simplest “should I take my raincoat today?” to more serious examples, such as those on investment and portfolio decisions, holding of shares, insurance patterns, or negotiation processes. Within these situations, the bounded rationality of individuals and institutions towards risk and uncertainty is embedded. The central theory underlying this study is prospect theory, an adequate model to predict the real and most often bounded rationality of human behavior given certain incentives, preferences, and constraints. Evelyn Stommel investigates a crucial question within behavioral economics, namely the research on reference points within human decision making processes. Based on experimental investigations, she focuses three key challenges: what constitutes a reference point, the process of the formation of a reference point, and factors influencing the formation of reference points.
Author: Botond Kőszegi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 44
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Maximilian Tenberge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Raghunath Singh Rao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumer behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 29
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Juanjuan Meng
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781124075617
Category : Equilibrium (Economics)
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Get Book Here
Book Description
This dissertation investigates two topics on behavioral economics: reference-dependent preferences and social utility. Chapter 1 and 2 provide field evidence from labor market and financial market to support reference-dependent model that treats expectations as reference points. Chapter 3 explores the implications of social distance on the endogenous emergence of personal relationships and impersonal market exchange. Chapter 1 : A model of cabdrivers' labor supply is proposed, building on Farber's (2005, 2008) empirical analyses and Kószegi and Rabin's (2006; henceforth "KR") theory of reference-dependent preferences. Following KR, the proposed model has targets for hours as well as income, determined by proxied rational expectations. The model, estimated with Farber's data, reconciles his finding that stopping probabilities are significantly related to hours but not income with Colin Camerer et al.'s (1997) negative "wage" elasticity of hours; and avoids Farber's criticism that estimates of drivers' income targets are too unstable to yield a useful model of labor supply. Chapter 2 : An investor' aversion to losses relative to a reference point in the stock market predicts a V-shaped relationship between the optimal position in a stock and current gains from that stock. Estimates from Odean's (1999) individual trading records show that (i) the predicted V-shape relationship exists for a large majority of investors, and (ii) expectations are the most likely determinant of investors' reference points. The V-shaped relationship and the implication of the initial purchase decision that expectations are mostly positive yield a simple explanation of the disposition effect. Chapter 3 : Personal relationships and impersonal exchange have been previously modeled in ways that prevent them from coexisting in equilibrium as contract enforcement mechanisms. Empirical evidence nonetheless suggests that they sometimes coexist. This paper introduces social surplus into exchange payoff, which is determined by social distance and specific to personal relationships but not to impersonal exchange. This approach allows the two modes of exchange to coexist in equilibrium. The possibility of impersonal exchange improves welfare and equality among buyers in general. But there also exist cases where competition between the two forms of exchange makes welfare and equality deteriorate.
Author: Einat Neuman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 21
Get Book Here
Book Description
