Research on the Leading Value Drive of Rural Homestead Transfer under Rural Revitalization——Based on the Evidences of China

With the development of urban-rural integration in China, the functional value of homestead bases has evolved from a single residential security value to a multiple composite values, and the property income of homestead bases has gradually become the value driver of transfer and the intrinsic demand of farm households. This paper takes Baitafan of Jinzhai County, Chongqing City, and Xiaofang Yu Village of Ji County as examples for in-depth discussion, and finds that the dominant value drivers of home base transfer mainly include three kinds: capitalization income, commercialization income, and non-farm employment income. The study concludes that it is important to give full play to the resource endowment effect and identify the dominant value of home base transfer according to local conditions to promote the standardized home base transfer and implement the rural revitalization strategy.

Does Teacher Training Narrow the Educational Gap between Urban and Rural Students? Empirical Evidence from CEPS Baseline Data

Based on the baseline data of the China Education Panel Survey, this paper explored the relationship between teacher training and academic performance in urban and rural samples respectively and the impact of teacher training on the urban-rural gap of students' academic performance. The results showed that: firstly, there was a significant urban-rural gap in academic performance, and the gap in high quantiles and language subjects were even larger. Secondly, the results of unconditional quantile regression showed that teacher training could improve the performance of urban students with different academic levels and rural students with intermediate or above academic levels, but it cannot improve the performance of rural students with lower academic levels. In addition, the overall effect of teacher training in urban areas is significantly higher than that in rural areas. Thirdly, different quantiles of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition found that the endowment effect and the coefficient effect of teacher training were the important causes of the urban-rural performance gap, but the relative sizes of the two were different according to the different grades and different quantiles of performance distribution. Therefore, to increase the training opportunities and improve the training quality of rural teachers as well as enhance the resource conversion rate of rural students are of great practical significance for narrowing the urban-rural performance gap.

A Bayesian Modelling Approach to Examine the Role of Testosterone Administration on the Endowment Effect and Risk-Taking

We investigated the effects of testosterone administration on aspects of decision-making within the Prospect Theory framework. Using bayesian modeling, we assessed risk-taking under framing and Endowment Effect (effect of possession). We administered 100mg testosterone to forty men in a double-blind placebo-controlled fully-randomized cross-over experiment where they participated in two tasks. One was a risktaking task with binary choices under positive and negative framing with different probabilities. In a second task, participants had to bid for for two categories of items, hedonic and utilitarian. We observed a significant increase in serum testosterone concentrations after transdermal application. Compared to placebo, testosterone administration increased risk-taking under the positive framing and decreased under the negative framing. The sensitivity to gain was positive in each framing. Our model showed that decision-making is jointly influenced by testosterone and the trade-off between gains and losses. Moreover, while the endowment effect was more pronounced for hedonic than for utilitarian items, the effect was independent of testosterone. The findings provide novel information for the complex modulatory role of testosterone on risk-taking. The proposed models of effects of individual differences in testosterone on risk-taking could be used as predictive models.

A study of boundedly rational behaviour in housing choice: evidence from Malaysia

Purpose Housing choice is always a complicated decision with its dual functions as a roof over the head and as an investment good. This paper aims to investigate the boundedly rational behaviours that affect the housing choice three bounded behaviours play roles in explaining the decision-making behaviour of homebuyers when they acquire/sell a property. These behaviours are endowment effect, loss aversion and herding, which have implications on the decision-making process. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on cross-sectional questionnaires and collected from 587 respondents. Factor analysis and reliability tests were used to identify the latent construct of bounded rational housing choice behaviour. In the meantime, the study used one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to examine whether there are any differences in the housing choice based on the respondents’ demographic backgrounds. Findings The findings indicated that a total of 11 items were reduced to three factors that accounted for the decision-making in housing choice. There are significant differences in herding behaviour amongst respondents with different level of education and their purpose of looking for a house. Research limitations/implications This paper helps to identify latent constructs that shed light on the housing choice, especially on the bounded rational behaviour. Originality/value This is one of the few studies to explore boundedly rational behaviours in housing choice from the angle of homebuyers. Previous studies addressed housing choice in terms of price, demand and supply in general but not on individual homebuyers. The results will be useful to developers, policymakers, homebuyers as well as scholars in understanding the decision-making process in housing choice.

Documentation of two unsuccessful attempts to developing objective measurements of non-attachment and non-reactivity for the study of mindfulness

Mindfulness has received increasing interest in the scientific community due to its proved benefits within clinical settings and in increasing well-being. One challenge for mindfulness researchers is how to measure the construct without relying on self-report instruments, which are prone to biases. Here we tested two different computer-based tasks that aimed to get an objective measure of non-attachment (the Behavioral Attachment Task, BAT) and non-reactivity (the Non-Reactivity Assessment Task, NORAT). The BAT leverages the endowment effect, a concept from behavioral economics describing the attachment developed over time towards something we own, to measure increased reactions times to decisions to sell an object gifted to participants. We correlated changes in these reaction times after participants had owned these objects over a delay period with a Non-Attachment Scale commonly used in mindfulness studies using several versions of the test. However, the BAT failed to replicate the original endowment effect, and no significant correlations with mindfulness scores were found. The NORAT investigated the effect of non-task related emotional stimuli (Negative and Positive pictures) on response times to a two-alternative forced choice task, and correlated the degree of emotional interference with the non-reactivity subscale from the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire. While negative pictures significantly increased reaction times, we did not find a correlation between this change and non-reactivity. In conclusion, the BAT and NORAT were not successful as objective measures of trait mindfulness, and further research is needed to explore novel ways of measuring these constructs.

How Field Experiments in Economics Can Complement Psychological Research on Judgment Biases

This review summarizes results of field experiments examining individual behaviors across several market settings—from open-air markets to rideshare markets to tax-compliance markets—where people sort themselves into market roles wherein they make consequential decisions. Using three distinct examples from my own research on the endowment effect, left-digit bias, and omission bias, I showcase how field experiments can help researchers understand mediators, heterogeneity, and causal moderation involved in judgment biases in the field. In this manner, the review highlights that economic field experiments can serve an invaluable intellectual role alongside traditional laboratory research.

Individual-level loss aversion in riskless and risky choices

Loss aversion can occur in riskless and risky choices. We present novel evidence on both in a non-student sample (660 randomly selected customers of a car manufacturer). We measure loss aversion in riskless choice in endowment effect experiments within and between subjects and find similar levels of average loss aversion in both. The subjects of the within study also participate in a simple lottery choice task which arguably measures loss aversion in risky choices. We find substantial heterogeneity in both measures of loss aversion. Loss aversion in riskless choice and loss aversion in risky choice are strongly positively correlated, but on average riskless loss aversion is higher than risky loss aversion. We find that in both choice tasks, loss aversion increases in age, income, and wealth, and decreases in education. Our results provide novel supportive input to the debate about the reality of loss aversion.

Prince: An improved method for measuring incentivized preferences

This paper introduces the Prince incentive system for measuring preferences. Prince combines the tractability of direct matching, allowing for the precise and direct elicitation of indifference values, with the clarity and validity of choice lists. It makes incentive compatibility completely transparent to subjects, avoiding the opaqueness of the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism. It can be used for adaptive experiments while avoiding any possibility of strategic behavior by subjects. To illustrate Prince’s wide applicability, we investigate preference reversals, the discrepancy between willingness to pay and willingness to accept, and the major components of decision making under uncertainty: utilities, subjective beliefs, and ambiguity attitudes. Prince allows for measuring utility under risk and ambiguity in a tractable and incentive-compatible manner even if expected utility is violated. Our empirical findings support modern behavioral views, e.g., confirming the endowment effect and showing that utility is closer to linear than classically thought. In a comparative study, Prince gives better results than a classical implementation of the random incentive system.