IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2112.12975.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Identification of misreported beliefs

Author

Listed:
  • Elias Tsakas

Abstract

It is well-known that subjective beliefs cannot be identified with traditional choice data unless we impose the strong assumption that preferences are state-independent. This is seen as one of the biggest pitfalls of incentivized belief elicitation. The two common approaches are either to exogenously assume that preferences are state-independent, or to use intractable elicitation mechanisms that require an awful lot of hard-to-get non-traditional choice data. In this paper we use a third approach, introducing a novel methodology that retains the simplicity of standard elicitation mechanisms without imposing the awkward state-independence assumption. The cost is that instead of insisting on full identification of beliefs, we seek identification of misreporting. That is, we elicit beliefs with a standard simple elicitation mechanism, and then by means of a single additional observation we can tell whether the reported beliefs deviate from the actual beliefs, and if so, in which direction they do.

Suggested Citation

  • Elias Tsakas, 2021. "Identification of misreported beliefs," Papers 2112.12975, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2112.12975
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.12975
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jaffray, Jean-Yves & Karni, Edi, 1999. "Elicitation of Subjective Probabilities When the Initial Endowment is Unobservable," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 5-20, April.
    2. Mara Ewers & Florian Zimmermann, 2015. "Image And Misreporting," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 363-380, April.
    3. Mariana Blanco & Dirk Engelmann & Alexander Koch & Hans-Theo Normann, 2010. "Belief elicitation in experiments: is there a hedging problem?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(4), pages 412-438, December.
    4. Karni, Edi, 1992. "Subjective Probabilities and Utility with Even-Dependent Preferences," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 107-125, May.
    5. Reinhard Selten & Abdolkarim Sadrieh & Klaus Abbink, 1999. "Money Does Not Induce Risk Neutral Behavior, but Binary Lotteries Do even Worse," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 213-252, June.
    6. Jay Lu, 2019. "Bayesian Identification: A Theory for State-Dependent Utilities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(9), pages 3192-3228, September.
    7. Theo Offerman & Joep Sonnemans & Gijs Van De Kuilen & Peter P. Wakker, 2009. "A Truth Serum for Non-Bayesians: Correcting Proper Scoring Rules for Risk Attitudes ," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(4), pages 1461-1489.
    8. Bullock, John G. & Gerber, Alan S. & Hill, Seth J. & Huber, Gregory A., 2015. "Partisan Bias in Factual Beliefs about Politics," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 10(4), pages 519-578, December.
    9. Harrison, Glenn W. & Martínez-Correa, Jimmy & Swarthout, J. Todd, 2013. "Inducing risk neutral preferences with binary lotteries: A reconsideration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 145-159.
    10. Tanjim Hossain & Ryo Okui, 2013. "The Binarized Scoring Rule," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(3), pages 984-1001.
    11. Tsakas, Elias, 2019. "Obvious belief elicitation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 374-381.
    12. Charles F. Manski, 2004. "Measuring Expectations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(5), pages 1329-1376, September.
    13. Tsakas, Elias, 2019. "Obvious belief elicitation," Research Memorandum 001, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    14. Dreze, Jacques H. & Rustichini, Aldo, 1999. "Moral hazard and conditional preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 159-181, March.
    15. Harrison, Glenn W. & Martínez-Correa, Jimmy & Swarthout, J. Todd & Ulm, Eric R., 2015. "Eliciting subjective probability distributions with binary lotteries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 68-71.
    16. Fishburn, Peter C, 1973. "A Mixture-Set Axiomatization of Conditional Subjective Expected Utility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(1), pages 1-25, January.
    17. Aurélien Baillon & Zhenxing Huang & Asli Selim & Peter P. Wakker, 2018. "Measuring Ambiguity Attitudes for All (Natural) Events," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1839-1858, September.
    18. Francetich, Alejandro, 2013. "Notes on supermodularity and increasing differences in expected utility," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 206-209.
    19. Michael Thaler, 2021. "The Supply of Motivated Beliefs," Papers 2111.06062, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2023.
    20. Karni, Edi & Schmeidler, David & Vind, Karl, 1983. "On State Dependent Preferences and Subjective Probabilities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(4), pages 1021-1031, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elias Tsakas, 2022. "Belief identification with state-dependent utilities," Papers 2203.10505, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2022.
    2. Elias Tsakas, 2023. "Belief identification by proxy," Papers 2311.13394, arXiv.org.
    3. Eyting, Markus & Schmidt, Patrick, 2021. "Belief elicitation with multiple point predictions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    4. Tsakas, Elias, 2018. "Robust scoring rules," Research Memorandum 023, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    5. Tsakas, Elias, 2020. "Robust scoring rules," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(3), July.
    6. Karl Schlag & James Tremewan & Joël Weele, 2015. "A penny for your thoughts: a survey of methods for eliciting beliefs," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(3), pages 457-490, September.
    7. Armantier, Olivier & Treich, Nicolas, 2013. "Eliciting beliefs: Proper scoring rules, incentives, stakes and hedging," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 17-40.
    8. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri & Rasocha, Vlastimil, 2021. "Experimental methods: Eliciting beliefs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 234-256.
    9. Karl Schlag & James Tremewan & Joël Weele, 2015. "A penny for your thoughts: a survey of methods for eliciting beliefs," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(3), pages 457-490, September.
    10. Crosetto, Paolo & Filippin, Antonio & Katuščák, Peter & Smith, John, 2020. "Central tendency bias in belief elicitation," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    11. Kai Barron, 2021. "Belief updating: does the ‘good-news, bad-news’ asymmetry extend to purely financial domains?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(1), pages 31-58, March.
    12. de Haan, Thomas, 2020. "Eliciting belief distributions using a random two-level partitioning of the state space," Working Papers in Economics 1/20, University of Bergen, Department of Economics.
    13. Stefan T. Trautmann & Gijs Kuilen, 2015. "Belief Elicitation: A Horse Race among Truth Serums," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(589), pages 2116-2135, December.
    14. Li Hao & Daniel Houser, 2012. "Belief elicitation in the presence of naïve respondents: An experimental study," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 161-180, April.
    15. Ingrid Burfurd & Tom Wilkening, 2022. "Cognitive heterogeneity and complex belief elicitation," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 557-592, April.
    16. Harrison, Glenn W. & Martínez-Correa, Jimmy & Swarthout, J. Todd, 2014. "Eliciting subjective probabilities with binary lotteries," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 128-140.
    17. Burdea, Valeria & Woon, Jonathan, 2022. "Online belief elicitation methods," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    18. Grewenig, Elisabeth & Lergetporer, Philipp & Werner, Katharina & Woessmann, Ludger, 2022. "Incentives, search engines, and the elicitation of subjective beliefs: Evidence from representative online survey experiments," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 231(1), pages 304-326.
    19. Sofianos, Andis, 2022. "Self-reported & revealed trust: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    20. Adrian Hillenbrand & André Schmelzer, 2015. "Beyond Information: Disclosure, Distracted Attention, and Investor Behavior," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2015_20, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2112.12975. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.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.