Confidence interval estimation tasks and the economics of overconfidence

Arbeitspapier

Experiments in psychology, where subjects estimate confidence intervals to a series of factual questions, have shown that individuals report far too narrow intervals. This has been interpreted as evidence of overconfidence in the preciseness of knowledge, a potentially serious violation of the rationality assumption in economics. Following these results a growing literature in economics has incorporated overconfidence in models of, for instance, financial markets. In this paper we investigate the robustness of results from confidence interval estimation tasks with respect to a number of manipulations: frequency assessments, peer frequency assessments, iteration, and monetary incentives. Our results suggest that a large share of the overconfidence in interval estimation tasks is an artifact of the response format. Using frequencies and monetary incentives reduces the measured overconfidence in the confidence interval method by about 65%. The results are consistent with the notion that subjects have a deep aversion to setting broad confidence intervals, a reluctance that we attribute to a socially rational trade-off between informativeness and accuracy.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance ; No. 535

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual ; Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty: General ; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification
• Subject: overconfidence ; uncertainty ; monetary incentives ; experiments ; Risiko ; Risikoaversion ; Wirtschaftspsychologie

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Cesarini, David ; Sandewall, Örjan ; Johannesson, Magnus
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Stockholm School of Economics, The Economic Research Institute (EFI)
• (where): Stockholm
• (when): 2003

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/56322
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET