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on Cognitive and Behavioural Economics |
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Issue of 2025–12–22
two papers chosen by Marco Novarese, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Little, Andrew T.; Nunnari, Salvatore |
| Abstract: | Debates about when and whether (partisan) directional motives influence information processing are hard to resolve because rational and motivated learning often look similar. We develop an experimental design to distinguish between these possibilities which focuses on the order in which information is presented. A core tenet of Bayesian updating is that order should not impact final beliefs, but if some information changes the motivation to process other information, order effects may emerge. In our first study, we randomize the partisanship of real endorsements for ballot propositions, as well as whether participants learn about these endorsements before observing other information about the propositions. We find no evidence of motivated information processing across several tests. In a second study, we randomize whether participants themselves argue for or against a proposition, and whether they know this position before observing other information. This produces a strong order effect: being randomized to argue for versus against a position affects beliefs more when it is learned before information about the proposition is provided. We also find suggestive evidence that this order effect is driven by selective attention to information. Overall, our results suggest that motivated reasoning about politics is less prevalent than commonly believed, but may arise primarily when people are in an argumentative mindset. |
| Date: | 2025–12–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:sxayc_v1 |
| By: | Orazio Attanasio (Yale University); V’ctor Sancibri‡n (Bocconi University); Federica Ambrosio (Universitˆ di Napoli Federico II) |
| Abstract: | For a long time, the majority of economists doing empirical work relied on choice data, while data based on answers to hypothetical questions, stated preferences or measures of subjective beliefs were met with some skepticism. Although this has changed recently, much work needs to be done. In this paper, we emphasize the identifying content of new economic measures. In the first part of the paper, we discuss where the literature on measures in economics stands at the moment. We first consider how the design and use of new measures can help identify causal links and structural parameters under weaker assumptions than those required by approaches based exclusively on choice data. We then discuss how the availability of new measures can allow the study of richer models of human behavior that incorporate a wide set of factors. In the second part of the paper, we illustrate these issues with an application to the study of risk sharing and of deviations from perfect risk sharing. |
| Date: | 2025–11–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2477 |