COGNITIVE ABILITIES,ANALYTIC COGNITIVE STYLE AND OVERCONFIDENCE: A COMMENTARY ON DUTTLE (2016)

In his recent paper, Duttle (2016) showed that individuals with higher cognitive abilities show less overconfidence. In these findings, cognitive abilities were equated with an analytic cognitive style (as measured by a cognitive reflection test, or CRT), although recent works in the field of cognitive psychology suggest separating these two constructs. In particular, it is argued that the analytic cognitive style, but not cognitive abilities, decreases susceptibility to cognitive biases. Analyses of data from Duttle's study support this assertion. Implications for cognitive psychology and behavioural economics are discussed.     

Too tall to be smart? The relationship between height and cognitive abilities

Recent research suggests for height–wage premiums because of differentials in cognitive abilities. This note adds to the discussion and examines whether verbal and non-verbal competencies are related to height. The results indicate that height is non-linearly associated to males' abilities.     

The impact of sustained attention on labor market outcomes: The case of Ghana

In this paper, we go beyond traditional measures of cognitive abilities (IQ) in explaining labor market and social outcomes in developing countries. We exploit a rich dataset from Ghana that provides information on demographics, labor market outcomes, and a direct measure of cognitive ability along with other test scores to construct a measure of sustained attention. Our work is therefore related to the broader literature in psychology on the importance of executive function on individual behavior and outcomes. We find that, at least for the case of Ghana, after controlling for IQ and other covariates, higher levels of sustained attention are associated with higher educational attainment and a higher likelihood of being employed in a white‐collar job.     

Underperformance of Actively Managed Portfolios: Some Behavioral Insights

Abstract

Two glaring anomalies in investment management are apparent: (1) after fees, active portfolio managers do worse than market indices, and (2) clients continue to pay for services they don’t receive. The purpose of this paper is to offer explanations of these anomalies from a behavioral perspective. We explore some of the cognitive biases that perpetuate active management and subsequent underperformance, including herding, disposition, and endowment effects, as well as conservatism and status quo biases, overconfidence, and agency problems. Investors’ continued use of active managers despite persistent disappointing returns is attributed to being victims of framing effect, hot-hand fallacy, lack of knowledge as well as intimidation or insecurity, and status quo bias. We propose some ways that portfolio managers and investors could improve their decision making.     

Individual heterogeneity in the returns to schooling: instrumental variables quantile regression using twins data

Considerable effort has been exercised in estimating mean returns to education while carefully considering biases arising from unmeasured ability and measurement error. Recent work has investigated whether there are variations from the “mean” return to education across the population with mixed results. We use an instrumental variables estimator for quantile regression on a sample of twins to estimate an entire family of returns to education at different quantiles of the conditional distribution of wages while addressing simultaneity and measurement error biases. We test whether there is individual heterogeneity in returns to education and find that: more able individuals obtain more schooling perhaps due to lower marginal costs and/or higher marginal benefits of schooling and that higher ability individuals (those further to the right in the conditional distribution of wages) have higher returns to schooling consistent with a non-trivial interaction between schooling and unobserved abilities in the generation of earnings. The estimated returns are never lower than 9 percent and can be as high as 13 percent at the top of the conditional distribution of wages but they vary significantly only along the lower to middle quantiles. Our findings may have meaningful implications for the design of educational policies.     

Time preferences,cognitive abilities and intrinsic motivation to exert effort

The experimental literature has found a positive relationship between patience and performance in cognitive tests that are not incentivized by money. It has also been shown that unincentivized cognitive tests capture not only cognitive ability (CA), but also intrinsic motivation related to the test takers’ personality traits. In order to determine whether the relationship between patience and test scores is driven by intrinsic motivation or CA, we run an experiment in which subjects take either incentivized or unincentivized cognitive tests. We find that while incentivized test scores positively correlate with patience, the unincentivized scores are not related to the time preferences of our subjects. The observed correlation between patience and cognitive test scores therefore seems to be driven by CA rather than by intrinsic motivation related to personality traits.     

COGNITIVE SKILLS AND CONFIDENCE: INTERRELATIONS WITH OVERESTIMATION,OVERPLACEMENT AND OVERPRECISION

This experimental study measures the three major types of judgmental overconfidence in a within‐subjects design. Performance‐based overestimation and overplacement are elicited in a Raven Progressive Matrices test for general intelligence. Calibration‐based overprecision is evaluated in a forecasting by confidence intervals task. This study takes a closer look at the interrelations of these different types. Moreover, as the main focus, it considers the effect of cognitive abilities on overconfidence. These are quantified in a cognitive reflection test. I find that cognitive skills are substantially interrelated with subjects’ confidence levels. Although overconfidence in absolute terms (overestimation) is not affected by cognitive abilities, the effect on overconfidence in relative terms (overplacement) is positive and significant. Overprecision, the calibration‐based type of overconfidence, is found to be significantly affected by cognitive capacity as well. Interval forecasts of cognitively more able subjects were much better calibrated than those of their peers who displayed substantial overconfidence in the precision of their forecasts.     

Formulating research policy on expert advice

National Research Assessments represent the principal policy used by countries with public university systems to improve the quality of their universities׳ research. They typically employ expert panels of local academics to assess journal quality, and use such assessments to reward publications. We propose a model of how experts assess quality and test this model using data from the recent Australian assessment. Controlling for objective quality, we show that experts׳ cognitive biases dominate their assessments. Consequently, such assessments exaggerate the quality of the experts׳ research and understate that of their colleagues. Our model can explain 95% of the variation in assessments.     

Time for behavioral political economy? An analysis of articles in behavioral economics

This study analyzes leading research in behavioral economics to see whether it contains advocacy of paternalism and whether it addresses the potential cognitive limitations and biases of the policymakers who are going to implement paternalist policies. The findings reveal that 20.7% of the studied articles in behavioral economics propose paternalist policy action and that 95.5% of these do not contain any analysis of the cognitive ability of policymakers. This suggests that behavioral political economy, in which the analytical tools of behavioral economics are applied to political decision-makers as well, would offer a useful extension of the research program. Such an extension could be related to the concept of robust political economy, according to which the case for paternalism should be subjected to ??worst-case?? assumptions, such as policymakers being less than fully rational.