Essays in experimental and development economics

This thesis is a collection of three essays on economic development and experimental economics. In Chapter 1, I present experimental evidence about how Thais treat information from domestic and foreign sources. Thai students answer a series of objective general-knowledge questions, both before and after observing answers given by American students and other Thai students. By looking at how subjects update their original answers after observing information, it is possible to estimate the weights that subjects assign to themselves, the American answers they see, and the Thai answers they see. Consistent with previous studies, I find that Thais exhibit a significant level of overconfidence in that they overweigh their initial answers. Despite their overconfidence, the relative weight that they give to answers given by Americans compared to answers given by other Thais is, in most instances, statistically indistinguishable from the optimal solution. Moreover, the experimental design allows me to distinguish between two possible explanations for this fact. Under one hypothesis, subjects overestimate the relative precision of American answers, but fail to recognize the value of independence, and the two errors cancel each other out. Under a second hypothesis, subjects recognize the relative accuracy of each group and appreciate the value of independence.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Healy, Andrew J

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Esther Duflo.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33833
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/33833

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33833