IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lsu/lsuwpp/2009-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Age Effects and Heuristics in Decision Making

Author

Abstract

We examine in controlled experiments how individuals make choices when faced with multiple options. The choice tasks mimic the selection of health insurance, prescription drug, or retirement savings plans. However, in our experiment, the available options can be objectively ranked. We find that the probability of a person selecting the optimal option declines as the number of options increases, with the decline more pronounced for older subjects. Heuristics seem to differ by age with older subjects relying more on suboptimal decision rules. Behavior consistent with the estimated decision rules is observed in an out-of-sample experiment.

Suggested Citation

  • Sudipta Sarangi & Tibor Besedes & Cary Deck & Mikhael Shor, 2009. "Age Effects and Heuristics in Decision Making," Departmental Working Papers 2009-03, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    • Handle: RePEc:lsu:lsuwpp:2009-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.lsu.edu/business/economics/files/workingpapers/pap09_03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 2008. "Differences in the Economic Decisions of Men and Women: Experimental Evidence," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, in: Charles R. Plott & Vernon L. Smith (ed.), Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 57, pages 509-519, Elsevier.
    2. Esther Duflo & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "The Role of Information and Social Interactions in Retirement Plan Decisions: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 815-842.
    3. Mitchell, Olivia S. & Utkus, Stephen P. (ed.), 2004. "Pension Design and Structure: New Lessons from Behavioral Finance," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199273393.
    4. Robin M. Hogarth & Natalia Karelaia, 2005. "Simple Models for Multiattribute Choice with Many Alternatives: When It Does and Does Not Pay to Face Trade-offs with Binary Attributes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(12), pages 1860-1872, December.
    5. Keeney,Ralph L. & Raiffa,Howard, 1993. "Decisions with Multiple Objectives," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521438834, October.
    6. Gur Huberman & Wei Jiang, 2006. "Offering versus Choice in 401(k) Plans: Equity Exposure and Number of Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(2), pages 763-801, April.
    7. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Shlomo Benartzi & Richard H. Thaler, 2002. "How Much Is Investor Autonomy Worth?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1593-1616, August.
    9. Richard G. Frank, 2004. "Behavioral Economics and Health Economics," NBER Working Papers 10881, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Kovalchik, Stephanie & Camerer, Colin F. & Grether, David M. & Plott, Charles R. & Allman, John M., 2005. "Aging and decision making: a comparison between neurologically healthy elderly and young individuals," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 79-94, September.
    11. Todd Eric Roswarski & Michael D. Murray, 2006. "Supervision of Students May Protect Academic Physicians from Cognitive Bias: A Study of Decision Making and Multiple Treatment Alternatives in Medicine," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 26(2), pages 154-161, March.
    12. Cole, Catherine A & Balasubramanian, Siva K, 1993. "Age Differences in Consumers' Search for Information: Public Policy Implications," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 20(1), pages 157-169, June.
    13. Florian Heiss & Daniel McFadden & Joachim Winter, 2010. "Mind the Gap! Consumer Perceptions and Choices of Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plans," NBER Chapters, in: Research Findings in the Economics of Aging, pages 413-481, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Colin F. Camerer & Howard Kunreuther, 1989. "Decision processes for low probability events: Policy implications," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(4), pages 565-592.
    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. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    2. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    3. Tomasz Jedynak, 2022. "Does the Formulation of the Decision Problem Affect Retirement?—Framing Effect and Planned Retirement Age," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-30, February.
    4. Shlomo Benartzi & Richard Thaler, 2007. "Heuristics and Biases in Retirement Savings Behavior," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(3), pages 81-104, Summer.
    5. Schmitz, Hendrik & Ziebarth, Nicolas R., 2011. "In Absolute or Relative Terms? How Framing Prices Affects the Consumer Price Sensitivity of Health Plan Choice," Ruhr Economic Papers 304, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    6. Bateman, Hazel & Eckert, Christine & Geweke, John & Louviere, Jordan & Satchell, Stephen & Thorp, Susan, 2014. "Financial competence, risk presentation and retirement portfolio preferences," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 27-61, January.
    7. Bhandari, Gokul & Deaves, Richard, 2008. "Misinformed and informed asset allocation decisions of self-directed retirement plan members," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 473-490, August.
    8. Blake, David & Cairns, Andrew & Dowd, Kevin, 2008. "Turning pension plans into pension planes: What investment strategy designers of defined contribution pension plans can learn from commercial aircraft designers," MPRA Paper 33749, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. repec:zbw:rwirep:0304 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Hendrik Schmitz & Nicolas R. Ziebarth, 2011. "In Absolute or Relative Terms? How Framing Prices Affects the Consumer Price Sensitivity of," Ruhr Economic Papers 0304, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    11. Iyengar, Sheena S. & Kamenica, Emir, 2010. "Choice proliferation, simplicity seeking, and asset allocation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(7-8), pages 530-539, August.
    12. McConnell, Margaret, 2013. "Behavioral economics and aging," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 1, pages 83-89.
    13. van Rooij, Maarten & Teppa, Federica, 2014. "Personal traits and individual choices: Taking action in economic and non-economic decisions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 33-43.
    14. Mitchell, O.S. & Piggott, J., 2016. "Workplace-Linked Pensions for an Aging Demographic," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 865-904, Elsevier.
    15. Gerd Gigerenzer, 1997. "Bounded Rationality: Models of Fast and Frugal Inference," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 133(II), pages 201-218, June.
    16. Silvia Jordan & Corinna Treisch, 2010. "The perception of tax concessions in retirement savings decisions," Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 2(3), pages 157-184, October.
    17. James Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte Madrain & Andrew Metrick, 2007. "Reinforcement Learning in Investment Behavior," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000001737, UCLA Department of Economics.
    18. Ivo Vlaev & Nick Chater & Neil Stewart, 2007. "Relativistic financial decisions: Context effects on retirement saving and investment risk preferences," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 2, pages 292-311, October.
    19. Yildiz, Özgür, 2014. "Lehren aus der Verhaltensökonomik für die Gestaltung umweltpolitischer Maßnahmen [Lessons from behavioral economics for the design of environmental policy measures]," MPRA Paper 59360, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Yuval Rottenstreich & Alex Markle & Johannes Müller-Trede, 2023. "Risky Sure Things," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(8), pages 4707-4720, August.
    21. Gary Charness & Marie-Claire Villeval, 2009. "Cooperation and Competition in Intergenerational Experiments in the Field and the Laboratory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 956-978, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    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:lsu:lsuwpp:2009-03. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/delsuus.html .

    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.