Measuring Subjective Expectations in Developing Countries: A Critical Review and New Evidence
Adeline Delavande,
Xavier Gine and
David McKenzie
Additional contact information
Adeline Delavande: RAND
No 4824, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank
Abstract:
The majority of economic decisions taken by individuals are forward looking and thus involve their expectations of future outcomes. Understanding the expectations that individuals have is thus of crucial importance to designing and evaluating policies in health, education, finance, migration, social protection, and many other areas. However, the majority of developing country surveys are static in nature and do not contain information on the subjective expectations of individuals. Possible reasons given for not collecting this information include fears that poor, illiterate individuals do not understand probability concepts, that it takes far too much time to ask such questions, or that the answers add little value. This paper provides a critical review and new analysis of subjective expectations data from developing countries and refutes each of these concerns. The authors find that people in developing countries can generally understand and answer probabilistic questions, such questions are not prohibitive in time to ask, and the expectations are useful predictors of future behavior and economic decisions. The paper discusses the different methods being tried for eliciting such information, the key methodological issues involved, and the open research questions. The available evidence suggests that collecting expectations data is both feasible and valuable, suggesting that it should be incorporated into more developing country surveys.
Keywords: Subjective Expectations; Survey Methodology; Development. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 D84 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2009-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-hap
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)
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Journal Article: Measuring subjective expectations in developing countries: A critical review and new evidence (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4824
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