|
on Discrete Choice Models |
| By: | Koonal Shah; Juan Manuel Ramos-Goñi; Nancy Devlin; Oliver Rivero-Arias |
| Abstract: | This Research Paper describes a study examining adolescent and adult responses to a discrete choice experiment (DCE) containing EQ-5D-Y health states in order to determine whether the two groups exhibit different preferences. This Research Paper describes a study examining adolescent and adult responses to a discrete choice experiment (DCE) containing EQ-5D-Y health states in order to determine whether the two groups exhibit different preferences. One of the challenges with generating an EQ-5D-Y value set is that traditional methods are cognitively demanding and may not be appropriate for younger individuals. However, asking adults to complete a valuation task from the perspective… |
| Keywords: | Clinical Outcomes, EuroQol, UK |
| JEL: | I1 |
| Date: | 2026–01–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ohe:grafun:002539 |
| By: | Chowdhury, Ashfaqul; Garg, Teevrat; Jagnani, Maulik; Mattsson, Martin |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we show that standard approaches for valuing non-market amenities like clean air through defensive expenditures are methodologically fragile. Estimates are highly sensitive to assumptions about household use of defensive technologies, and survey data on usage is unreliable. Moreover, because researchers convert a one-time purchase or willingness-to-pay elicitation into a flow value by dividing by assumed hours of use, lower assumed usage can mechanically imply higher valuations. To address this fragility, we develop a revealed preference approach that estimates the flow value of clean air using high-frequency data on residential air purifier usage in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Leveraging randomized variation in the marginal cost of operation, we recover the households’ trade-off between money and clean air without relying on purchase decisions or stated usage intentions. We find that the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for clean air is lower and much more tightly bounded than previous estimates. This low valuation is not driven by traditional market frictions like liquidity constraints or misperceptions about pollution severity and technology effectiveness, suggesting limits to environmental policies that rely on sustained complementary household action. |
| JEL: | Q51 Q53 O12 I12 D12 C93 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21303 |
| By: | Yingshuo Wang; Xian Sun; Yanhang Li; Zhichao Fan; Zexin Zhuang |
| Abstract: | Tabular foundation models achieve strong accuracy on choice prediction tasks, but their predictions often violate the economic logic those tasks require: raising a price can increase predicted demand, implied willingness-to-pay estimates are frequently negative or implausible, and unavailable alternatives receive nonzero probability. We propose a two-stage adapter that takes a foundation model's predicted choice probabilities as a precomputed feature and embeds them inside a multinomial logit's utility. In Stage 1, we fit the multinomial logit's structural coefficients by maximum likelihood with sign constraints; in Stage 2, we freeze those coefficients and fit a small neural correction operating on the foundation model's predictions. We prove that this composition exactly preserves the multinomial logit's marginal rate of substitution, so analytically computable value-of-time becomes a mathematical guarantee rather than an empirical accident. Across three datasets and two foundation models, the adapter gains 6.4 percentage points (pp) of test accuracy on average over the multinomial logit and up to 12.8 pp, maintains 100% cost monotonicity, and produces values of time within the published transportation-economics range on the transportation datasets. Performance degrades gracefully under foundation-model context restriction, retaining at least 6 pp of accuracy gain even at 10% of the original foundation-model context. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.26432 |
| By: | Avner Seror (Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France) |
| Abstract: | We study choice among lotteries in which the decision maker chooses from a small library of decision rules. At each menu, the applied rule must make the realized choice a strict improvement under a dominance benchmark on perceived lotteries. We characterize the maximal Herfindahl-Hirschman concentration of rule shares over all locally admissible assignments, and diagnostics that distinguish rules that unify behavior across many menus from rules that mainly act as substitutes. We provide a MIQP formulation, a scalable heuristic, and a finite-sample permutation test of excess concentration relative to a menu-independent random-choice benchmark. Applied to the CPC18 dataset (N= 686 subjects, each making 500-700 repeated binary lottery choices), the mean rule concentration is 0.545, and 64.1% of subjects show excess rule concentration, rejecting menu-independent random choice at the 1% level. Concentration gains are primarily driven by modal-payoff focusing, salience-thinking, and regret-based comparisons. |
| Keywords: | Behavioral Economics; Decision Theory; Revealed Preference |
| JEL: | D91 D81 C44 |
| Date: | 2026–01–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2602 |
| By: | Hensel, Lukas; Abebe, Girum; Gerard, Francois; Caria, Stefano |
| Abstract: | Job loss is an understudied risk for formal workers in lower-income countries. In these settings, lump-sum severance pay is often the only source of job-loss insurance. We quasi-experimentally show that female factory workers in Ethiopia displaced by a tariff hike experience lasting declines in employment and consumption spending, and rising poverty. Experimentally, we find that additional lump-sum support induces early spending and reduces overall and manufacturing employment persistently. Disbursing an equivalent amount in tranches improves consumption smoothing and avoids adverse employment effects. Further, we document a high willingness to pay for additional insurance, alongside heterogeneous preferences over disbursement modality that shape responses to our interventions. These findings imply that increasing job-loss insurance raises welfare, although moving away from the lump-sum default can generate substantial additional gains. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21398 |
| By: | Lydiane Nabec (RITM - Réseaux Innovation Territoires et Mondialisation - Université Paris-Saclay, UMR PSAE - Paris-Saclay Applied Economics - AgroParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Stephan Marette (UMR PSAE - Paris-Saclay Applied Economics - AgroParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Eva Delacroix (DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | This article aims to understand the conditions under which FOP Eco-Score labeling of food products could help consumers to choose greener food products, according to the favourability of the score, its consistency with the nutritional score, and the brand of the product. |
| Keywords: | Labeling, Consumer, willingness-To-Pay, Eco-Label, Eco-Label willingness-To-Pay Consumer Labeling |
| Date: | 2026–02–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05650081 |
| By: | Buser, Thomas (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | A large literature in behavioral and labor economics documents gender differences in personality traits and preferences, as well as their explanatory power for gender gaps in occupational choice and career success. These studies usually focus on a single trait or personality classification, such as competitiveness, risk preferences, or the Big Five personality inventory. In this paper, I instead ask how much of gender differences in occupational sorting can be statistically explained by a comprehensive range of trait and preference measures jointly. I combine detailed personality and preference indicators elicited in a representative Dutch survey panel and link them to career outcomes for which large gender gaps are observed: the underrepresentation of women in management and math-intensive occupations, and the underrepresentation of men in teaching and caring occupations and the public sector. Correcting for measurement error, differences in preferences and personality can statistically explain a large part – typically half or more – of gender differences in occupational sorting. Traits with a "dark" side – such as willingness to play dirty, externalizing behavior or psychopathy – capture a surprisingly large share of these gaps. |
| Keywords: | gender, occupational segregation, personality, economic preferences, competitiveness |
| JEL: | J16 J24 D91 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18721 |
| By: | Florian Brandl; Felix Brandt |
| Abstract: | Brandt et al. (2016) characterized a probabilistic social choice function known as maximal lotteries within a framework based on fractional preference profiles, which abstracts away from individual voters. While this modeling assumption enables a more elegant and transparent proof, it complicates comparison with other results in the literature. The purpose of this note is to transfer their results to the standard model of social choice, where each preference profile is defined for a finite number of voters. Along the way, we prove a slightly stronger version of their main theorem that uses a weaker continuity condition and allows for real-valued (rather than only rational-valued) probabilities. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.10998 |
| By: | Brian Curran; Bruce D. Meyer; Derek Wu |
| Abstract: | When estimating nonlinear models for binary outcomes, such as probit and logit models, researchers often rely on average partial effects (APEs) to summarize the effect of a regressor. Because the marginal effect of a variable in these models depends on the values of all other variables, the value of an APE hinges on the portion of the sample used for the calculations. When averaged over parts of the sample drawn from a subpopulation not used to define the object of interest, the APE may be misleading. This paper highlights common situations, such as differences-in-means with a secondary group and difference-in-differences designs, where APEs calculated for the full sample deviate from marginal effects for the appropriate part of the sample. We propose a simple and costless solution in specific cases and demonstrate through simulations that recalculating APEs over the appropriate subsample yields unbiased results. Reexamining published results from multiple papers, we find statistically significant discrepancies between the reported estimates and the appropriately calculated APEs. |
| JEL: | C21 C23 C25 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35366 |
| By: | Gevorg Khandamiryan; Vira Semenova |
| Abstract: | We develop a covariate-assisted approach to partially identified parameters that are solutions to an under-identified system of linear equations with known coefficients. Examples include bounds on treatment effects, models of unemployment with state dependence, choice-theoretic models of IV, and random utility models. The boundary (i.e., support function) of the proposed identified set is represented as an average of intersections of regression functions, aggregated over the covariate distribution. We show that the boundary is a regular parameter, propose asymptotic theory, and demonstrate using an empirical application to Jobs First. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.08359 |
| By: | J.M. Baland; M. Boltz; C. Guirkinger; A. Jolivet; R. Ziparo |
| Abstract: | Non-participation in household decisions is commonly interpreted as weak empowerment. We challenge this interpretation by showing that non-participation can be a strategic choice — a form of delegation — when a spouse expects the decision outcome to be sufficiently close to her preferences regardless of her involvement. We propose a model of imperfect information and derive conditions under which delegation arises in equilibrium: it occurs when the opportunity cost of participation in the decision is large compared to the preference gap between spouses. A key implication is that the spouse who receives authority may achieve lower welfare than the one who delegates. We test these predictions in two incentivized experiments conducted among couples in Belgium/France and Benin, finding strong support across both contexts. Survey evidence further confirms the external validity of the results. Our findings suggest that standard survey measures of intra-household bargaining, by conflating strategic delegation with disempowerment, may incorrectly reflect the distribution of power within households. |
| Keywords: | intra-household decisions, collective model, delegation, household experiment |
| JEL: | D13 O12 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2026-21 |
| By: | Andrej Cupak (National Bank of Slovakia); Pavel Gertler (National Bank of Slovakia); Judita Jurasekova Kucserova (National Bank of Slovakia); Jan Klacso (National Bank of Slovakia); Andrej Moravcik (National Bank of Slovakia); Denys Orlov (National Bank of Slovakia); Stefan Rychtarik (National Bank of Slovakia) |
| Abstract: | The Slovak housing market is strongly ownership-oriented, with renting functioning largely as a transitional state, concentrated among younger and lower-income individuals. This report draws on the 2025 Survey on housing affordability and attitudes towards real estate investment to examine what drives tenure decisions and how individuals perceive affordability. Homeowners reach ownership through three broadly equal routes: (i) outright purchase, (ii) mortgage financing, and (iii) inheritance or gifts. Housing satisfaction is consistently higher among owners, while affordability is perceived as the lowest in large cities and for larger households. Survey evidence from an advisory choice experiment confirms that support for ownership is strong but highly sensitive to financing conditions. The findings highlight that housing affordability is shaped not only by market prices but also by credit access, expectations, life-cycle stage, and household characteristics. |
| JEL: | R21 R31 D12 G51 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:svk:wpaper:1142 |
| By: | Ciril Bosch-Rosa (TU Berlin); Frank Heinemann (TU Berlin); Baptiste Massenot (Indepdendent Researcher); Thomas Meissner (Maastricht University) |
| Abstract: | We study how individuals adjust consumption in response to changes in the real interest rate using a large, preregistered, within-subject survey experiment on a representative sample of the German population. Respondents evaluate hypothetical scenarios in which the real interest rate rises by five percentage points through either an increase in the nominal interest rate or an equivalent decline in inflation. While classic intertemporal choice models predict identical responses across these scenarios, we find a clear asymmetry: respondents plan sizable cuts in consumption, higher saving, and lower borrowing when nominal rates increase, yet adjust these margins much less when inflation falls. Differences in perceived wealth effects may contribute to this asymmetry, but they cannot fully explain it. Rising nominal interest rates appear to provide stronger incentives to increase saving and avoid borrowing than does declining inflation. Declining inflation is also associated with more contradictory choices, for example, reporting higher consumption and higher saving while leaving borrowing unchanged. Together, these findings suggest that respondents more readily internalize the consequences of nominal interest rate changes than of disinflation, which has implications for the design and communication of monetary policy. |
| Keywords: | consumption; real interest rate; inflation expectations; survey; |
| Date: | 2026–06–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:578 |