Presidential Address: Economics and Measurement: New Measures to Model Decision Making

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Almas, Ingvild; Attanasio, Orazio; Jervis, Pamela
• 署名单位: Stockholm University; Norwegian School of Economics (NHH); Yale University; Norwegian School of Economics (NHH); University of Cambridge; Universidad de Chile; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
• 刊物名称: ECONOMETRICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0012-9682
• DOI: 10.3982/ECTA21528
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 947-978
• 关键词: preferences; TECHNOLOGY

摘要

Most empirical work in economics has considered only a narrow set of measures as meaningful and useful to characterize individual behavior, a restriction justified by the difficulties in collecting a wider set. However, this approach often forces the use of strong assumptions to estimate the parameters that inform individual behavior and identify causal links. In this paper, we argue that a more flexible and broader approach to measurement could be extremely useful and allow the estimation of richer and more realistic models that rest on weaker identifying assumptions. We argue that the design of measurement tools should interact with, and depend on, the models economists use. Measurement is not a substitute for rigorous theory, it is an important complement to it, and should be developed in parallel to it. We illustrate these arguments with a model of parental behavior estimated on pilot data that combines conventional measures with novel ones.