PAYOFF-BASED BELIEF DISTORTION

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Jiao, Peiran
• 署名单位: Maastricht University; Maastricht University
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1093/ej/ueaa019
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 1416-1444
• 关键词: personal-experience; risk-taking; investors; PSYCHOLOGY; aversion; matter; biases; STOCK

摘要

Heterogeneous beliefs often arise among people with the same information but different personally experienced payoffs. To explain this, I propose a mechanism in which experienced payoffs distort beliefs: gains lead an agent to relatively underweight negative new signals and thus to become overoptimistic, whereas losses do the opposite. I experimentally test this mechanism and find behaviour consistent with its predictions. The experiment created a setting where payoffs carried no informational value for Bayesian updating, and thus offered a strong test for the effect of payoffs on beliefs. The findings were robust, and distinct from alternative mechanisms in important ways.