Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/228379 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CeDEx Discussion Paper Series No. 2019-15
Publisher: 
The University of Nottingham, Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics (CeDEx), Nottingham
Abstract: 
According to the Description-Experience gap (DE gap), people act as if overweighting rare events when information about those events is derived from descriptions but as if underweighting rare events when they experience them through a sampling process. While the is now clear evidence that the DE gap exists, so far, its exact nature, the causes of it and its implications for economics remain unclear. Due to the variety of experimental designs and measures reported in previous literature, the nature, causes and implications of the phenomenon for economic theory remain unclear. We present a new experiment which examines in a unified design four distinct causal mechanisms that might drive the DE gap, attributing it respectively to information differences (sampling bias), to a feature of preferences (ambiguity sensitivity) or to aspects of cognition (likelihood representation and memory). Our design permits model-free and model-mediated tests for these mechanisms and for the DE gap itself. Using a modelfree approach, we elicit a DE gap similar in direction and size to the literature's average and find that, when each factor is considered in isolation, sampling bias stemming from under-represented rare events, is the only significant driver. Yet, model-mediated analysis shows that rare events are overweighted even in experience. Moreover, this level of analysis reveals the potential of a smaller DE gap, existing even without information differences.
Subjects: 
Decisions from Description
Decisions from Experience
Risk Preferences
Cumulative Prospect Theory
Ambiguity
JEL: 
D81
C91
D91
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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