Behavioral Biases are Temporally Stable

Victor Stango and Jonathan Zinman

No 27860, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Social scientists often consider temporal stability when assessing the usefulness of a construct and its measures, but whether behavioral biases display such stability is relatively unknown. We estimate stability for 25 biases, in a nationally representative sample, using repeated elicitations three years apart. Bias level indicators are largely stable in the aggregate and within-person. Within-person intertemporal rank correlations imply moderate stability and increase dramatically when using other biases as instrumental variables. Additional results reinforce three key inferences: biases are stable, accounting for classical measurement error in bias elicitation data is important, and eliciting multiple measures of multiple biases is valuable.

JEL-codes: C36 C81 D90 E70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe
Note: AG AP DEV EEE EH IO LE LS PE
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