| 来源类型 | Working Paper |
| 规范类型 | 报告 |
| DOI | 10.3386/w2183 |
| 来源ID | Working Paper 2183 |
| Can People Compute? An Experimental Test of the Life Cycle Consumption Model | |
| Stephen Johnson; Laurence J. Kotlikoff; William Samuelson | |
| 发表日期 | 1987-03-01 |
| 出版年 | 1987 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | This paper presents the results of an experimental study of the life cycle model in which subjects were asked to make preferred consumption choices under hypothetical life cycle economic conditions. The questions in the experiment are designed to test the model's assumption of rational choice and to elicit information about preferences. The subjects' responses suggest a widespread inability to make coherent and consistent consumption decisions. Errors in consumption decision-making appear to be very substantial and, in many cases, systematic. In addition, the experiment's data strongly reject the standard homothetic, time-separable life cycle model. The principal specific findings of the laboratory experiment are: (1) Subjects displayed significant inconsistencies in their consumption decisions; each of the subjects, in at least two pairs of economically identical situations, chose consumption values that differed by 20 percent or more. From the perspective of the standard life cycle model, error in decision-making accounts, on average, for roughly half of the variation in consumption. (2) A sizeable fraction of subjects undervalued future earnings relative to present assets; i.e., they systematically overdiscounted future earnings. (3) Almost all subjects exhibited oversaving behavior, apparently because they underestimated the power of compound interest. (4) The hypothesis that intertemporal consumption preferences are uniform across individuals is strongly rejected. Indeed, the demographic characteristics of subjects are significant determinants of consumption choice in the experiment. |
| 主题 | Other |
| URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w2183 |
| 来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
| 引用统计 | |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/559436 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Stephen Johnson,Laurence J. Kotlikoff,William Samuelson. Can People Compute? An Experimental Test of the Life Cycle Consumption Model. 1987. |
| 条目包含的文件 | ||||||
| 文件名称/大小 | 资源类型 | 版本类型 | 开放类型 | 使用许可 | ||
| w2183.pdf（407KB） | 智库出版物 | 限制开放 | CC BY-NC-SA | 浏览 | ||
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