IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v36y2001i2p327-363.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Probability Limits: Are Subjective Assessments Adequately Accurate?

Author

Listed:
  • William F. Bassett
  • Robin L. Lumsdaine

Abstract

The Health and Retirement Study asks respondents their subjective probabilities about 12 future events. An individual's responses contain a common component that is unrelated to the true probability of the event in question. Use of the entire set of an individual's responses to control for this unobserved individual heterogeneity can improve the information content in responses regarding intergenerational transfer and labor force participation plans. Although there is little overall gain from renormalization, in samples where the respondent may not fully have understood the question adjusting the responses for heterogeneity leads to an improved ability to predict outcomes in later waves.

Suggested Citation

  • William F. Bassett & Robin L. Lumsdaine, 2001. "Probability Limits: Are Subjective Assessments Adequately Accurate?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 36(2), pages 327-363.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:36:y:2001:i:2:p:327-363
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3069662
    Download Restriction: A subscripton is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Erdogan Ciftci E & Bago d'Uva T & van Doorslaer E & van Lenthe J, 2009. "Self-perceived health and longevity: do dynamics matter?," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 09/31, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    2. Sanna Nivakoski, 2020. "Wealth and the effect of subjective survival probability," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(2), pages 633-670, April.
    3. Olken, Benjamin A., 2009. "Corruption perceptions vs. corruption reality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 950-964, August.
    4. Engelberg, Joseph & Manski, Charles F. & Williams, Jared, 2009. "Comparing the Point Predictions and Subjective Probability Distributions of Professional Forecasters," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27, pages 30-41.
    5. Erdogan-Ciftci, Esen & van Doorslaer, Eddy & Bago d'Uva, Teresa & van Lenthe, Frank, 2010. "Do self-perceived health changes predict longevity?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(11), pages 1981-1988, December.
    6. Maria G. Perozek, 2005. "Using subjective expectations to forecast longevity: do survey respondents know something we don't know?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-68, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Kristin J. Kleinjans & Jinkook Lee, 2006. "The link between individual expectations and savings: Do nursing home expectations matter?," Economics Working Papers 2006-05, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    8. Hyytinen, Ari & Lahtonen, Jukka & Pajarinen, Mika, 2012. "Entrepreneurial optimism and survival," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 20/2012, Bank of Finland.
    9. Li Gan & Michael D. Hurd & Daniel L. McFadden, 2005. "Individual Subjective Survival Curves," NBER Chapters, in: Analyses in the Economics of Aging, pages 377-412, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Michael Moore & Younghwan Song, 2007. "The Effect of Subjective Survival Probabilities on Retirement and Wealth in the United States," Chapters, in: Robert L. Clark & Naohiro Ogawa & Andrew Mason (ed.), Population Aging, Intergenerational Transfers and the Macroeconomy, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Martin Salm, 2010. "Subjective mortality expectations and consumption and saving behaviours among the elderly," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(3), pages 1040-1057, August.
    12. Shaw, W. Douglass, 2016. "Environmental and Natural Resource Economics Decisions Under Risk and Uncertainty: A Survey," International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, now publishers, vol. 9(1-2), pages 1-130, July.
    13. Owen O'Donnell & Federica Teppa & Eddy van Doorslaer, 2008. "Can subjective survival expectations explain retirement behaviour?," DNB Working Papers 188, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    14. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2012_020 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Alberto Palloni & Beatriz Novak, 2016. "Subjective survival expectations and observed survival: How consistent are they?," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 14(1), pages 187-228.
    16. Matthias Huber & Till Nikolka & Panu Poutvaara & Ann-Marie Sommerfeld & Silke Uebelmesser, 2022. "Migration Aspirations and Intentions," CESifo Working Paper Series 9708, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:36:y:2001:i:2:p:327-363. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://jhr.uwpress.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.