A Measure of Behavioral Heterogeneity

Jose Apesteguia and Miguel A. Ballester

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2026, vol. 18, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel way to measure behavioral heterogeneity in a population of stochastic individuals. Our measure is choice-based; it evaluates the probability that, over a randomly selected menu, the sampled choices of two sampled individuals differ. We provide axiomatic foundations for this measure and a decomposition result that separates heterogeneity into its intrapersonal and interpersonal components.

JEL-codes: D01 D11 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1257/mic.20240239

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