Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Benefit Disclosure in Financial Choices Online and Field Experiments

经济学博士论文研究：在线金融选择和现场实验中的利益披露

• 批准号: 1919483
• 负责人: Mark Dean
• 金额: $ 3.8万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-08-01 至 2020-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1919483&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Benefit

Innovations in consumer finance offering consumers choices in financial products have not increased consumers' ability to take advantage of these choices. Surveys show low financial literacy rates among US adults, resulting in financial mistakes that hurt consumers' financial well-being. Financial education to improve financial literacy have failed because of the false assumption that consumers are aware of the benefits of learning to make financial choices. This research project will use experimental methods to study how information on the benefits of financial education affects consumers' financial decision making. Specifically, it addresses three questions: (i) Are consumers aware of the benefits of learning? (ii) how does awareness (or lack thereof) affect financial decisions?, and (iii) How can policy-makers complement consumers' awareness using benefit disclosure with financial education to improve financial well-being? The results of this research will provide inputs into financial decision making, which will lead to efficient financial decision making, increased savings and investment, hence economic growth.This research proposal will investigate how benefit disclosure affect consumers' financial decision making. The project first proposes a simple theoretical framework incorporating the cost of incentive perception to complement the standard costly-thinking approach. The project then tests the predictions from this framework in two experiments. The first experiment tests the precise mechanisms using incentivized choices in hypothetical controlled scenarios. This experiment manipulates three aspects of the decision environment independently: incentive levels, information about incentives, and education. While the first two variations are aimed directly at understanding the cost of incentive perception, the education treatment both links this project to existing research and more importantly, allows a test of the potential complementarity of the two information interventions. The second experiment focuses on information about incentives and education in a randomized control trial conducted. These two variations allow an investigation into the applicability of benefit disclosure and education, which are policies derived from the framework, in affecting naturalistic choices. This results of this research will improve financial decision making, increase savings and investment and economic growth.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

消费者金融的创新为消费者选择中的选择并没有提高消费者利用这些选择的能力。调查显示，美国成年人的财务素养率低，导致财务错误损害了消费者的财务状况。 由于消费者意识到学习做出财务选择的好处的错误假设是错误的假设，金融教育以提高金融素养失败。 该研究项目将使用实验方法来研究有关金融教育收益的信息如何影响消费者的财务决策。 具体来说，它解决了三个问题：（i）消费者知道学习的好处吗？ （ii）意识（或缺乏意识）如何影响财务决策？和（iii）政策制定者如何使用福利披露与金融教育相辅相成，以改善金融福祉？ 这项研究的结果将提供对财务决策的投入，这将导致有效的财务决策，增加储蓄和投资，因此经济增长。这项研究建议将调查利益披露如何影响消费者的财务决策。 该项目首先提出了一个简单的理论框架，该框架结合了激励感的成本，以补充标准的昂贵思维方法。然后，该项目在两个实验中测试了该框架的预测。第一个实验在假设受控方案中使用激励选择来测试精确的机制。该实验独立操纵决策环境的三个方面：激励水平，有关激励措施和教育的信息。虽然前两个变体旨在直接了解激励感的成本，但教育治疗既将该项目与现有研究联系起来，更重要的是，可以测试两种信息干预措施的潜在互补性。第二个实验重点介绍了进行的随机控制试验中有关激励和教育的信息。这两种变化允许对利益披露和教育的适用性进行调查，这是从框架中得出的政策，影响自然主义选择。 这项研究的结果将改善财务决策，增加储蓄，投资和经济增长。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准来评估值得支持的。