alexander myers i'm an economics major and i'm from san diego cal
the title of my honours thesis is exploring the stability of race preferences over different
scale
the thesis statement is a if an individual experiences more temptation in one period over
another specifically the present over the future
then they will behave in a more risk averse manner and present them to sort
explain what that means that sorta have that step back a second and i realise
that individuals are generally assumed to avoid the risk
and the reason for that is that we experience what's called the diminishing marginal utility
of
and the concept is if you're very wealthy one dollar doesn't really give you that
let utility but if you very poor it gives you a lot
and so one of the one of the things is that even if people or
risk averse if they're dealing with really small gambles like a coin flip for a
dollar for tensor tail
i
gambles that compared to their lifetime well for a really small
then even though they are risk averse in general for that gamble they will behave
as not risking
and what recently to really means is that so long as there is a and
expected value that's positive for the gamble they will take a or if they're evaluating
two different gambles they will refer the one that if they average out the expected
winnings would be slightly that's the one that they are
if there did in a fifty percent chance of winning a million dollars or losing
five hundred thousand dollars even though that has the expectation that they will win some
money
the loss of five and a thousand dollars or so catastrophic that they wouldn't take
it wouldn't take that because you're risk averse and so the issue is that
in laboratory experiments we would expect that people even if their risk averse for large
k would be risk neutral for the small
and so i came up with the theory that explain some anomalous laboratory results of
risk aversion over small sticks
and the weight explained it is by saying that
even though
mainstream economic theory assumes that if for example you received an unexpected winning eighty dollars
in a period
the main economic theory assumes that you would spread that out over your life
you would read integrated into your
you you're optimal consumption stress and so
temptation is sort of a concept that means that you don't you instead of spreading
it over a lifetime of periods you might spend it all five period six periods
or maybe one pure you might just go out to the store by can you
is your company that's the that the concept that i'm that i'm sort of tapping
into
and so my hypothesis is basically that when people have more
a more temptation when
they're hungrier and more likely to go
you know after the experiment in go get a candy bar
that they will behave in a more descriptors that and one way to think about
why that would be is that let's say you're sitting in the experiment and you're
starving and you have the expectation that you know you're given the choice a fifty
percent chance of getting thirty dollars in the fifty percent chance of getting forty dollars
or a fifty percent chance of getting seventy dollars
and fifty percent chance of getting you know
now
in terms of
the expected value of those two lotteries the same on average you're gonna get thirty
five dollars but the point is that if you get zero you can't go get
a signal and that's unfortunate for a hungry person participating in the experiment so
i guess that's sort of
one way of understanding what
annotation means and how
most economists are interested in modeling real world situations with lots of people or businesses
or
situations where
were it is reasonable to expect people to be rational
there are
the there are other economists on that
are part of the field known as behavioural economics that look at what the people
actually do at least in laboratory experiments and how does that relates you what we
think they should
and so that sort of that the vein that my that my thesis is it
it's a an experimental thesis conducted on amherst college students
basically it gave them options for boundaries to participate in with different probabilities and payoffs
in the last and to choose which one which one do you want
and with the cab the art that there's a chance that will actually get the
money that you
are choosing and so
the goal of that obviously was to keep them on its what to their really
what and so
and that sorta where the
why the temptation appears because
when you deal with real behaviour real situations you have to account for why didn't
they do the prediction well why didn't they behave hyper ration
so temptation is one attempt to
do there's one professor out what one of by readers a c and that within
the other day and the meeting to the total number of being very critical of
my work
and so i it was sort of sort of an advanced meeting
and so he said
what i just why you don't know i'm taking the position that a referee for
journal with because we're talking about
potentially publishing and i said no you know that makes a lot a lot of
science
you know thank you for giving me the core questions that i would have to
explain
if someone more were evaluated my work and
another propose a common that that's what the pieces differences that's what the questions are
through doing my thesis i
became really interested in doing research which
it's not that i didn't like to before she's i'd never had the opportunity to
actually do my own research and so i'm sort of feeling that i'm leaning towards
graduate school at some point
in the future in terms of short-term colours i'm definitely gonna continue working on my
thesis
do some more data analysis rewrite it and then see if i can get it
published integer
i think that a lot of
things that were significant about my amherst college experience
manifested themselves in my thesis
so what specifically
i wrote a behavioural economics this is the and that's not really normal or standard
for on economics
and that sort of has to do with
me you know through college figuring out what it is that i that i want
what it is that i that i like that i'm interested in and so you
know instead of writing i it would be the importance of what i was a
self more
i wanted to go into investment bank
because i thought that's what
that's what you do that's what you're supposed to do
i have found this field
i ran with it i roll my thesis on it and in many ways you
know that
these soft more version of me wouldn't have done
i
on another level i think my thesis will be really significant inasmuch as
i have a really strong feeling that
the process of writing my thesis disorder nudged me on a different track for where
i go from here so i that you know in that sense it's almost the
most important part of my of my college experience in as much as i think
after honing in on what really interest me and what excites me intellectually the thesis
really dave maybe answer