Stirling Workshop Series in Economics, Psychology and Policy

The second in our series of workshops on Economics, Psychology and Policy takes place from 9am to 5pm on June 15th in the Stirling Cottrell Building. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers working on a range of exciting topics spanning disciplines including economics, psychology, and mathematics. Details of the previous session are here. Please email claremdelargy@gmail.com to confirm a place.

Our new Economics and Psychology Research Group will launch in October. Our preliminary webpage is here and twitter feed is here. We very much welcome suggestions for developing the group, ideas for collaboration and offers for sponsorship of workshops and events.

Schedule

9.00 Clare Delargy (University College Dublin) "Gender and SES differences in earnings expectations: survey and field experiment evidence".


9.30 Professor Nick Hanley (University of Stirling) "Information effects in random utility models"


10.00 Dr. David Comerford (Duke University) "Cigarette substitutes or Nicotine Replacement Therapies? implications for public health"


10.30 BREAK


10.40 Eimear Crowe (University College Dublin and St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin) "Examining social interaction effects on mood using Day Reconstruction"


11.10 Dr. AlbertoMontagnoli & Dr. Mirko Moro (University of Stirling). "Mood and Decision Making"


11.40 Professor Roger Sugden & Malido Mooken (University of Stirling) "Capabilities approach to academia"


12.10 LUNCH


13.10 Dr. Adam Kleczkowski & Dr. Savi Maharak (University of Stirling) "Controlling epidemic spread by responding to risk: Do it well or not at all"


13.40 Dr. Aniko Biro (University of Edinburgh) "An analysis of mammography decisions"


14.20 Dr. Michael Daly (University of Aberdeen) "Self-control, smoking and policy effectiveness".


14.50 BREAK

15.00 Dr. Georgios Panos (University of Stirling). "Risk tolerance and entrepreneurship"

15.30 Professor Liam Delaney (University of Stirling) "Behavioural economics and health policy"


16.00 Dr. Pete Lunn (The Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin) "A Good Deal on My Mind: Experiments On Willingness to Exchange”


17.00 END

Robustness in health research: Do differences in health measures, techniques, and time frame matter?

Robustness in health research: Do differences in health measures, techniques, and time frame matter?
Paul Frijters, Aydogan Ulker
Journal of Health Economics
Volume 27, Issue 6, December 2008, Pages 1626–1644

Abstract
Survey-based health research is in a boom phase following an increased amount of health spending in OECD countries and the interest in ageing. A general characteristic of survey-based health research is its diversity. Different studies are based on different health questions in different datasets; they use different statistical techniques; they differ in whether they approach health from an ordinal or cardinal perspective; and they differ in whether they measure short-term or long-term effects. The question in this paper is simple: do these differences matter for the findings? We investigate the effects of life-style choices (drinking, smoking, exercise) and income on six measures of health in the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) between 1992 and 2002: (1) self-assessed general health status, (2) problems with undertaking daily tasks and chores, (3) mental health indicators, (4) BMI, (5) the presence of serious long-term health conditions, and (6) mortality. We compare ordinal models with cardinal models; we compare models with fixed effects to models without fixed-effects; and we compare short-term effects to long-term effects. We find considerable variation in the impact of different determinants on our chosen health outcome measures; we find that it matters whether ordinality or cardinality is assumed; we find substantial differences between estimates that account for fixed effects versus those that do not; and we find that short-run and long-run effects differ greatly. All this implies that health is an even more complicated notion than hitherto thought, defying generalizations from one measure to the others or one methodology to another.

JEL classification C23; C25; I31; Z1
Keywords Morbidity; Mortality; Lifestyle; Income

Ungated Version

Linkedin

My Linkedin profile is on this link  May use Linkedin as a way of developing aspects of the research center. Suggestions welcome. At present, we are using a square website (link here) and a twitter account (link here) and this blog to keep people informed about what we are doing.

The trouble with brain scans

A breath of fresh air to see informed skepticism about neuroimaging in the press:

Vaughan Bell: the trouble with brain scans

The points in the article are elaborated and the original sources included here.

Readers of this blog recently reviewed articles in 'genoeconomics' (listed here, with key questions here) which have clearly stated the statistical power considerations required in order to identify the genetic factors (mainly in the form of variation in single-nucleotide polymorphisms) that contribute to behaviour. Recurring throughout these articles was the mantra that genetic variation which is common in the population has very (very) small effects on behavioural traits. There are likely to be a few exceptions but by and large this appears to be the rule. The vast majority of studies showing large effects of single-nucleotide polymorphisms on complex traits such as intelligence are likely to be false positives/findings which fail to replicate, as demonstrated here.

A similar theme is emerging from the neuroimaging literature. One implication is that the statement "neuroscientists identify the brain area for (fill in your own favourite psychological characteristic - happiness, jealousy, helping, intelligence, the neural basis of social and physical pain (r = .88) etc.)" is likely to be as false as the similarly tantalizing headline "neuroscientists find the gene responsible for (fill in the blank)".  Tal Yarkoni, an exponent of appropriate consideration of the shortcomings and power limitations (and associated incentives for small samples and a lack of statistical transparency) of many neuroimaging studies, summarizes this well:

"...we expect complicated psychological states or processes–e.g., decoding speech, experiencing love, or maintaining multiple pieces of information in mind–to depend on neural circuitry widely distributed throughout the brain, most of which are probably going to play a relatively minor role. The problem is that when we conduct fMRI studies with small samples at very stringent statistical thresholds, we’re strongly biased to detect only a small fraction of the ‘true’ effects, and because of the bias, the effects we do detect will seem much stronger than they actually are in the real world. The result is that fMRI studies will paradoxically tend to produce *less* interesting results as the sample size gets bigger. Which means your odds of getting a paper into a journal like Science or Nature are, in many cases, much higher if you only collect data from 20 subjects than if you collect data from 200. The net result is that we have hundreds of very small studies in the literature that report very exciting results but are unlikely to ever be directly replicated, because researchers don’t have much of an incentive to collect the large samples needed to get a really good picture of what’s going on."

Population Association of America 2012

The annual PAA conference took place recently in San Francisco. This is comparable in size and scope to the AEA and is mainly focused on demography but also covers research in economics, ageing, and development (amongst others). Over 200 sessions were organised, the topics being:

Fertility, Family Planning, Sexual Behaviour, and Reproductive Health
Marriage, Family, Households, and Unions
Children and Youth
Health and Mortality
Race, Ethnicity, and Gender
Migration and Urbanization
Economy, Labour Force, Education, and Inequality
Population, Development, and Environment
Population and Aging
Data and Methods
Applied Demography

All papers are available for download on the PAA website.

http://paa2012.princeton.edu/SessionsByTopic.aspx

Some highlights:

The Economics of Fertility
New Evidence on School Reforms and Child Outcomes
Longevity and Life Expectancy

There were two sessions chaired by Richard Easterlin:

Happiness and Economic and Social Well-Being
Happiness in International Perspective

Quantitative Methods in Psychology & Economics Wed 20 Jun

This exciting one-day workshop is aimed at doctoral students in both psychology and economics.  In the morning session "Analysing Psychological Data Using Mixed-Effects Models", we will describe new ways in which psychologists are attempting to find patterns in data collected from experiments or from naturalistic samples. 

We will explain why the R statistical programming language is gaining traction in Psychology, and we will offer examples of the kinds of research designs and analyses that mixed-effects models make possible; and we will offer guidance on current best practice for analyses.  We will present evidence from recent simulations suggesting that mixed-effects models should be used with caution, and show that, in some situations, good-old ANOVA is still a useful statistical tool. 

The afternoon session, "Incorporating Subjective and Psycholmetric Measures into Economics: Issues and Applications", examines the use of self-reported or subjective measures in economic applications. Firstly we examine survey design and principles for sound construction of survey measures. Secondly we examine basic linear and non-linear econometric methods for the analysis of survey data. Thirdly we examine the use of subjective measures as dependent variables in standard regression designs. In particular, we consider differential item functioning, namely respondents to survey questions using different criteria for judging what the question means. Finally, we examine the incorporation of self-reported and subjective measures in economic studies as explanatory variables explaining outcomes such as health and education.

Channel 4 Secret Eaters

The modern fly-on-the-wall type documentary isn't usually my thing but I really enjoyed the Channel 4 documentary "Secret Eaters". A family agrees to both fill out food diaries tracking calorie consumption and also to be tracked using hidden cameras. The basic gist of the show is that almost all family members report consuming something around the recommended 2,000 or so calories on any given day. However, these estimates turn out to be wild underestimates largely due to ignoring portion sizes, not counting alcohol, not tracking soft-drink monitoring and other factors. In the case of both parents, they were actually consuming more than double the calories they reported were. There are many caveats in terms of this being a TV show, a sample size of one and many others like that but there is growing evidence of behavioural factors in overeating (see e.g. AER papers and proceedings paper "Strategies for promoting healthier food choice").

Always wear your seatbelt

Via Marie, this seatbelt safety advertisement tugs strongly at the heart strings. An interesting use of a strong emotional set of images to reinforce a safety message. It has been downloaded over 14 million times on youtube which is, at least, a metric of the reach of the ad.

Ireland's Favourite Painting

Below is a photograph of Ireland's favourite painting - Hellelil and Hildebrand, The Meeting on the Turret Stairs by Frederic William Burton. The painting was chosen by public vote. The journal.ie quotes the Irish President reflecting on the value of art on this link. The poll has generated some interesting debate on the value of art in general.

11th TIBER Symposium on Psychology and Economics

Below is from Decision Science News blog - link here

TIBER, the Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research is happy to announce the 11 Tiber Symposium on Psychology and Economics, to be held on August 24, 2012.

The symposium aims to bring together Economists, Psychologists, Marketing researchers and others who work on Behavioral Decision Making, either in individual or interdependent settings. The symposium will be held at Tilburg th University and consists of two keynotes, a number of parallel sessions with presentations of about 20 to 30 minutes, and a poster session.
This year’s keynote speakers are:

- George Loewenstein

- Colin Camerer

The goal of this series of symposia is to establish contact and discussion between researchers of the different fields. We look for empirical contributions from diverse fields, such as Individual Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, Bargaining, Social Dilemmas, Experimental Games, Emotions, Fairness and Justice, Rational Choice, and related subjects.

CALL FOR PAPERS

If you would like to contribute to this symposium by presenting a paper, we ask you to send an abstract of max. 300 words via email to Diana Vingerhoets (D.Vingerhoets@tilburguniversity.edu). Please use subject: TIBER XI in your email.

On the basis of these abstracts we will select presenters for the symposium. Please indicate whether you would be willing to present your research in a poster session by adding Poster: Yes or Poster: No to your submission.

IMPORTANT DATES

18th of April Call for papers

1st of June Deadline for submission of abstracts

18th of June Selection of speakers

11th of August Normal registration deadline (late registration fee applies after this date)

24th of August Symposium at Tilburg University

More information about the program of the symposium and the keynote speakers, as well as the location of the symposium and the registration forms will soon be available here.

If you have any questions regarding the conference, please contact Job van Wolferen (J.vanWolferen@tilburguniversity.edu). Again, please use subject: TIBER XI. Other organizers include Ilja van Beest, Rik Pieters, Jan Potters, and Marcel Zeelenberg.

Regulating Bodies & Influencing Health: Nudges, Incentives and Public Policy

Speaking at this very interesting session organised by the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy at the University of Manchester. Details on this link or below.


26th June 2012

09.00-16.15

Government and policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic have begun to draw on behavioural research when constructing health-affecting public policy and legislation. The relevant studies suggest that individuals are susceptible to a range of influences upon the decisions they make; for example, choices are shaped by the presentation of certain options as defaults or how available options are framed. Is it appropriate to use this knowledge to ‘nudge’ the public towards making better health-affecting decisions? Are such interventions ethically justifiable? Do they wrongly interfere with individual autonomous choice? Can they be justified by appeal to the idea of so-called ‘libertarian paternalism’, through promoting individuals’ interests whilst also preserving their liberty? Can, and if so ought, the state remain neutral in relation to such policy choices? This symposium will bring together philosophers, lawyers, economists, and social scientists and will focus on the use of nudges (and other ways of influencing) as policy measures for influencing the public’s health.

Speakers include
Mark D. White, Professor and Chair in Political Science, Economics and Philosophy, City University of New York
Kyle Powys Whyte, Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Michigan State University
Liam Delaney, SIRE Professor of Economics, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics, University of Stirling
Muireann Quigley, Lecturer in Bioethics, Centre for Social Ethics & Policy, University of Manchester
Tom Walker, Lecturer in Ethics, Centre for Professional Ethics, Keele University
Jane Wilson, Independent researcher, Sydney
Yashar Saghai, Doctoral Candidate in Philosophy, Georgetown University
John Coggon, Research Fellow, Institute for Science, Ethics, & Innovation, University of Manchester
James Wilson, Lecturer in Philosophy and Health, Centre for Philosophy, Justice, & Health, University College London
Marianne Promberger, Research Fellow in Psychology, Centre for the Study of Incentives in Health, King’s College London
Henriette Prast, Chair & Prof of Personal Financial Planning, Tilburg University


Attendance is free. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. However, places are limited due to the venue size. You must register for this event in advance by emailing: health-nudges@manchester.ac.uk with your name and affiliation.

Tuesday Links

It has been a while since we have done a links update. A lot of activity that might have been carried out on the blog before has migrated to twitter, with all the relative advantages and disadvantages that entails.

1. Headstrong report on mental health among Irish young people.

2. BBC article on the rise of the adult playground, including comments by Richard Thaler.

3. Interesting scientific american article summarising research on academic blogging.

4. Defending social science against those who would prefer to know nothing 

5. Bloomberg article on facebook's organ donation move.

6. Unliver's approach to sustainable consumption.

Organ Donation Consent Systems Paper

Looking for pre-distribution comments on organ donation consent paper. Clare's summary of the conference presentation is below. If interested/willing to offer comments please email.


Summary of conference presentation:

Ireland has an organ donation rate of 21.2 donors per million population (pmp), higher than the United Kingdom (16.3 donors pmp) but lower than the current world leader, Spain (33.8 donors pmp). Despite these figures, in 2009 there were 515 people on the waiting list for donations. Of the 154 donors available for referral in 2009, 90 ultimately donated their organs, 42 were deemed medically unsuitable and in 22 cases the family refused consent.

There are three main systems of eliciting individual consent for organ donation. The first is informed consent, wherein consent is not assumed and individuals must consciously decide to become donors by opting into the system - for instance, by getting a donor card, telling their relatives or signing up to a registry. Ireland, the UK and Germany all operate informed consent systems. An alternative system is presumed consent, wherein consent for donation is assumed, and individuals must opt-out by signing a register or informing their next of kin if they do not wish to donate. Spain and Austria currently use a presumed consent system. Finally, mandated choice makes no assumptions about consent, and instead simply requires that individuals make a choice either way. Such a system is currently being trialled in the UK. When applying for driver’s licenses, applicants are now required to answer a question about donation before they can proceed with their application.

Behavioural economics research has suggested that changing from an informed consent to a presumed consent system would increase the number of donors available for transplant by harnessing the tendency people have to stick with a default. For instance, in a UK Transplant survey, 17 per cent of respondents intended to sign up to the register but 'hadn't got around to joining', as the default option is not to be on it.  It is argued that presumed consent systems avoid the low levels of take up seen in opt-in systems, which are a product of procrastination or inertia. By assuming consent while allowing those who object to opt out of donating, you should increase the number of donors by including those who would otherwise put off signing up into the system automatically. Some research papers have found 25-30 per cent differences in rates between informed and presumed consent countries, even controlling for other factors which may influence rates (Abadie and Gay, 2006).

However, a closer analysis of consent for donation carried out by Healy (2006) suggests that the solution to increasing donor rates may not be so simple. In all but one OECD country investigated, the family of the deceased are offered a veto in deciding about donation; their consent is sought before any harvesting takes place. As a result, ultimately, it is the next of kin who decide whether the deceased’s organs will be transplanted or not. Indeed, Minister for Health James Reilly recently stated that“No organ removal will ever happen against the wishes of a family. Full Stop." Research on family consent suggests that actions like signing up to a registry or getting an organ donor card may serve as important signals to family members about donation preferences, UK data shows that families refuse consent in 10 per cent of cases when they knew the wishes of the deceased, but in 40 per cent of cases where they did not know.

These findings have a number of implications. Firstly, the role of insights from behavioural economics in a family consent framework compared to an individual consent structure is less clear; cultural factors such as the role of family in society may play a more important part in determining levels of donation. Abadie and Gay (2006) suggest that the two different systems may still produce different donation rates, as they provide different cues for families, and thus influence consent levels. If most people in these two systems stick with the status quo, families in informed consent systems may infer that if the deceased did not opt-in, they did not have strong preferences to donate, whereas under a presumed consent system those who did not opt-out are not likely to have had strong preferences not to donate. Families may be more likely to conclude that the deceased would have consented to organ donation in a presumed consent system because of the framing.

Secondly, it is an open question as to whether it is possible or desirable to eliminate the role of the family in decision making around consent. It is hard to imagine a doctor knowingly going against the wishes of a family, particularly during what is surely a very stressful, high-pressured environment. However, the scope for individual autonomy in such a system is unclear; as it does not seem to be possible to ensure that your organs are or are not transplanted in the event of death, beyond asking family members to honour your wishes. Is it possible to retain a sense of individual autonomy within a system that also allows for family consent? Pete Lunn suggested at the conference that organ donor cards or registries could allow for people to state whether they wish for their family to have a right to make a decision about donation for them.  Again, it is not certain whether this would make doctors more likely to follow the wishes of the individual over those of the family in the event of conflict, but it may reduce instances of such conflict by convincing the family of the deceased’s wishes.  

Finally, the extent to which people are aware of the organ donation system (and arecent Eurobarometer survey would suggest that they are not - only 25 per cent of Europeans know the regulations governing organ donation in their own country) in place may also influence individual opinions on this issue. Many people I have discussed this with are unaware that their wishes regarding organ donation do not have to be upheld.  The role of organ donor awareness campaigns could also be rethought, is it worth launching campaigns which aim to increase levels of family consent rather than individual consent, given the current system?

Some useful guides for PhD students

I will add to this post over time and republish but two particularly useful ones below:

1. Alex Wood at Manchester has a really useful guide for psychology PhD students.

2. Anna Zimars of King's College has another guide for students more generally. (via Kevin Denny)

Presenting Survey Items One at a Time

Presenting Survey Items One at a Time Compared to All at Once Decreases Missing Data without Sacrificing Validity in Research with Internet Volunteers

Abstract: In two large web-based studies, across five distinct criteria, presenting survey items one-at-a-time was psychometrically either the same or better than presenting survey items all-at-once on a single web page to volunteer participants. In the one-at-a-time format, participants were no more likely to drop-out of the study (Criterion 1), and were much more likely to provide answers for the survey items (Criterion 2). Rehabilitating participants who otherwise would not have provided survey responses with the one-at-a-time format did not damage internal consistency of the measures (Criterion 3) nor did it negatively affect criterion validity (Criterion 4). Finally, the one-at-a-time format was more efficient with participants completing it more quickly than the all-at-once format (Criterion 5). In short, the one-at-a-time format results in less missing data with a shorter presentation time, and ultimately more power to detect relations among variables.

Citation: Nosek BA, Sriram N, Umansky E (2012) Presenting Survey Items One at a Time Compared to All at Once Decreases Missing Data without Sacrificing Validity in Research with Internet Volunteers. PLoS ONE 7(5): e36771.

Positions in Behavioural Economics QUT

Below is from Lionel Page of QUT: http://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/page4/

I am glad to let you know that several positions are opened in our School of Economics for early career researchers at the Assistant Professor level. We are looking in particular for researchers in behavioural/experimental economics to join our group (http://qubegroup.wordpress.com/). Given your own research in the area, please do not hesitate to forward this information to any potential applicant you may know.

Here are the details of the positions:

-          Three Postdoc positions level B (Assistant Professor level): http://www.inomics.com/economics/jobs/2012/5/16/postdoctoral-research-fellow-3-positions,

-          One Lecturer position level B (Assistant Professor level) on a more restricted range of fields: https://qut.nga.net.au/publicfiles/qut/jobs/60501a51-3e17-48c5-99f0-a05100e0a3fb/12253%20QUT%20Business%20School%20Position%20Description.pdf

Potential candidates are very much welcome to contact me to have more information on our research in behavioural/experimental economics.

JEBO Special Issue on Well-Being and GDP

Important special issue of JEBO with several papers on well-being measurements and determinants.

Book and Journal Clubs: Suggestions welcome

Suggestions welcome for upcoming online book and journal clubs, in particular suggestions from someone willing to moderate one.

Overview 

We are currently running a virtual book club and seminar series aimed at PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty associated with the behavioural work in Geary and Stirling. If you would like to be included and haven't already been emailed, please let me know. Due to technology constraints, spaces are very limited so will not at present be able to make them more widely available though if you are a loyal reader working in this space and really want to be involved let me know by email and we can try to accommodate.

Schedule:
Friday May 18th 2pm: "Stability and change in personality over the lifecourse". List of papers and summary here. Michael Daly.

Friday May 11th 2pm: Journal summary of papers on genoeconomics. List of papers here. Michael Daly.

Friday May 4th 2pm: Journal summary on papers in personality and economics. List of papers here. Liam Delaney.

Friday April 27th 2pm: Journal club on two papers: "Influencing Behaviour the Mindspace Way" and "The behavioural change wheel: A new method for characterising behavioural change and interventions". Michael Daly.

Friday 13th April 2pm: Journal club on two papers: "What People Desire, Feel Conflicted About, and Try to Resist in Everyday Life"; and "Everyday Temptations: An Experience Sampling Study of Desire, Conflict, and Self-Control". Michael Daly.

Monday 2nd April 2pm: "Book Club on Ainslie, Breakdown of Will". Liam Delaney.

Friday 9th March 3pm: "Book Club on Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow". Clare Delargy.

Suggestions:

Singer's "The life you can save"
Heckman on life-span development
Psychology's Ghosts (book review in WSJ here)
Handbook of Self-Control
Howard Rachlin on self-control  (e.g. classic article here)
Papers on culture and financial decision-making
Jon Elster "Nuts and Bolts for Social Sciences"
Baumeister new book on Willpower (link here )
Ariely upside of irrationality ( link here )
Dan Gilbert Stumbling on Happiness (link here )
Hershfield, H., Goldstein, D. G., Sharpe, W. F., Fox, J., Yeykelis, L., Carstensen, L. L., & Bailenson, J. N. (2011). Increasing Saving Behavior Through Age-Progressed Renderings of the Future Self. Journal of Marketing Research, XLVIII(November), S23-S37.

"Embodied economics: how bodily information shapes the social coordination dynamics of decision-making"