主讲人：Alain Cohn

时间：2021年5月27日 21：00

地点：腾讯会议ID：776828905

题目：Time, Health Risks and Motivated Optimism

主讲人简介：Alain Cohn现为密歇根大学助理教授，博士毕业于瑞士苏黎世大学，芝加哥大学博士后，已经在 Nature, Science，PNAS, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies,  Economic Journal，Management Science，Review of Financial Studies等顶尖期刊发表多篇论文。Alain Cohn教授是行为实验经济学领域的学术新星，发表了多篇具有巨大影响力的学术研究，其中发表在Nature上关于金融从业者诚信问题的研究和发表在science上的“丢钱包”实验均引起较大反响和热烈讨论。

Abstract：Modern economic models of choice assume that people derive utility not only from the realization of outcomes, but also from the anticipation of future events. This can lead people to distort beliefs optimistically about future events. In this paper, we examine the notion of such motivated beliefs in a natural high-stakes environment―the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a series of surveys that elicited people’s beliefs about the risk of getting infected with the coronavirus. Leveraging exogenous variation in the timing of having to return to work after the initial wave of lockdowns, we find that people hold increasingly optimistic beliefs about the risk of catching the virus as the return date approaches. This pattern suggests that people dynamically distort their beliefs in an attempt to reduce their anxiety about an imminent, potentially negative event. This dynamic belief distortion is more pronounced for risk averse individuals and those who are more likely to get severely ill. We provide a tractable model that accounts for the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of belief distortion.