IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/upf/upfgen/1357.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Estimating Bayesian decision problems with heterogeneous priors

Author

Abstract

In many areas of economics there is a growing interest in how expertise and preferences drive individual and group decision making under uncertainty. Increasingly, we wish to estimate such models to quantify which of these drive decision making. In this paper we propose a new channel through which we can empirically identify expertise and preference parameters by using variation in decisions over heterogeneous priors. Relative to existing estimation approaches, our \Prior- Based Identification" extends the possible environments which can be estimated, and also substantially improves the accuracy and precision of estimates in those environments which can be estimated using existing methods.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Eliot Hansen & Michael McMahon, 2013. "Estimating Bayesian decision problems with heterogeneous priors," Economics Working Papers 1357, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
  • Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:1357
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econ-papers.upf.edu/papers/1357.pdf
    File Function: Whole Paper
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gerling, Kerstin & Gruner, Hans Peter & Kiel, Alexandra & Schulte, Elisabeth, 2005. "Information acquisition and decision making in committees: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 563-597, September.
    2. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon & Carlos Velasco Rivera, 2013. "How Expoerts Decide: Preferences or Private Assessments on a Monetary Policy Committee?," CESifo Working Paper Series 4201, CESifo.
    3. Iaryczower, Matias & Lewis, Garrett & Shum, Matthew, 2013. "To elect or to appoint? Bias, information, and responsiveness of bureaucrats and politicians," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 230-244.
    4. Peter Sorensen & Marco Ottaviani, 2000. "Herd Behavior and Investment: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 695-704, June.
    5. Matias Iaryczower & Matthew Shum, 2012. "The Value of Information in the Court: Get It Right, Keep It Tight," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 202-237, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon, 2016. "First Impressions Matter: Signalling as a Source of Policy Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(4), pages 1645-1672.

    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. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon, 2016. "First Impressions Matter: Signalling as a Source of Policy Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(4), pages 1645-1672.
    2. Hansen, Stephen & McMahon, Michael, 2011. "How Experts Decide: Identifying Preferences versus Signals from Policy Decisions," Economic Research Papers 270761, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    3. Eijffinger, Sylvester & Mahieu, Ronald & Raes, Louis, 2018. "Inferring hawks and doves from voting records," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 107-120.
    4. Stephen Hansen & Carlos Velasco Rivera & Michael McMahon, 2013. "How Experts Decide: Preferences or Private Assessments on a Monetary Policy Committee?," CAMA Working Papers 2013-19, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    5. Melissa Newham & Rune Midjord, 2018. "Herd Behavior in FDA Committees: A Structural Approach," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1744, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    6. Hansen, Stephen & McMahon, Michael & Velasco Rivera, Carlos, 2014. "Preferences or private assessments on a monetary policy committee?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 16-32.
    7. Camara, Fanny & Dupuis, Nicolas, 2014. "Structural Estimation of Expert Strategic Bias: The Case of Movie Reviewers," TSE Working Papers 14-534, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    8. Ekor, Maxwell & Saka, Jimoh & Adeniyi, Oluwatosin, 2014. "Monetary Policy Committee and Monetary Policy Conduct in Nigeria: A Preliminary Investigation," MPRA Paper 60770, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2014.
    9. Erhart, Szilárd & Vasquez-Paz, Jose Luis, 2007. "Optimal monetary policy committee size: theory and cross country evidence," Kiel Advanced Studies Working Papers 439, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    10. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon & Andrea Prat, 2018. "Transparency and Deliberation Within the FOMC: A Computational Linguistics Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 801-870.
    11. Gabriel Desgranges & Celine Rochon, 2008. "Conformism, Public News and Market Effciency," OFRC Working Papers Series 2008fe16, Oxford Financial Research Centre.
    12. Ascari, Guido & Rankin, Neil, 2007. "Perpetual youth and endogenous labor supply: A problem and a possible solution," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 708-723, December.
    13. Shamena Anwar & Patrick Bayer & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2019. "Politics in the Courtroom: Political Ideology and Jury Decision Making," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 834-875.
    14. Luis Garicano & Richard A. Posner, 2005. "Intelligence Failures: An Organizational Economics Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 151-170, Fall.
    15. Clark, Tom S. & Montagnes, B. Pablo & Spenkuch, Jörg L., 2022. "Politics from the Bench? Ideology and Strategic Voting in the U.S. Supreme Court," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    16. Nathan Canen & Kristopher Ramsay, 2023. "Quantifying Theory in Politics: Identification, Interpretation and the Role of Structural Methods," Papers 2302.01897, arXiv.org.
    17. Andrea Mattozzi & Marcos Y. Nakaguma, 2016. "Public versus Secret Voting in Committees," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2016_29, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    18. Mihov, Ilian & Sibert, Anne, 2006. "Credibility and Flexibility with Independent Monetary Policy Committees," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(1), pages 23-46, February.
    19. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3mdje1f65o8qrqpapnmrhon2vm is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Peter Breyer & Eleonora Endlich & Dieter Huber & Doris Oswald & Christoph Prenner & Lukas Reiss & Martin Schneider & Walter Waschiczek, 2021. "Eigenkapitalausstattung österreichischer Unternehmen – Hindernisse und Handlungsoptionen," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue Q3/21, pages 1-22.
    21. Paolo Balduzzi & Clara Graziano & Annalisa Luporini, 2014. "Voting in small committees," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 111(1), pages 69-95, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bayesian decision making; expertise; preferences; estimation.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Estimation: General

    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:upf:upfgen:1357. 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: http://www.econ.upf.edu/ .

    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.