Xueting Wang

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  Increased risk-taking, not loss tolerance, drives adolescents’ propensity to choose risky prospects more often under peer observation, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

  Relative to adults, adolescents make more welfare-decreasing decisions, especially in the presence of peers. The consequences of these decisions result in substantial individual and societal losses in terms of lives lost, injury, hospitalization costs, and foregone opportunities. In this paper, we use laboratory within-subject and between-subject experiments with younger (12-17 years old) and older (18-24 years old) adolescents to identify which economic preference is affected by peer observation in adolescence — risk attitudes in gains, risk attitudes in losses, and/or loss aversion. We find that while observed by peers, older adolescents become more risk-tolerant both in gains and in losses but more loss averse. We discuss the potential mechanisms driving the result and its implications for policy.

  Link to paper
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  Present bias for monetary and dietary rewards, Experimental Economics

  Economists model self-control problems through time-inconsistent preferences. Empirical tests of these preferences largely rely on experimental elicitation using monetary rewards, with several recent studies failing to find present bias for money. In this paper, we compare estimates of present bias for money with estimates for healthy and unhealthy foods. In a within-subjects longitudinal experiment with 697 low-income Chinese high school students, we find strong present bias for both money and food, and that individual measures of present bias are moderately correlated across reward types. Our experimental measures of time preferences over both money and foods predict field behaviors including alcohol consumption and academic performance.

  Link to paper

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  Present-biased time preference for monetary rewards: a meta-analysis

  We identified 63 articles with 85 estimates of present bias parameter. The literature shows that people are on average present biased towards money (β=0.82), but substantial heterogeneity across studies exists. The source of heterogeneity comes from the subject pool, methodology (e.g. BDM auction), geographical location of data collection, payment method, the study place (e.g. online vs. lab). Individuals show stronger present bias towards real effort and health outcomes compared to monetary rewards. There is evidence of publication bias in the direction of overestimating present-bias, but the present bias still exists after correcting for potential publication bias

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  Dynamic prospect theory - two core decision theories coexist in the gambling behavior of monkeys and human beings

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  Reference point in general population

  Searching for the reference point used by general population.

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  Discrimination and investment decisions (data collection in progress)

  Discrimination, based on race, gender, or religion, is a well-documented phenomenon that leads to disadvantageous financial, labour market, academic, and social outcomes for those who experience it because of the decisions made by those who discriminate against them. But does experiencing discrimination change people’s subsequent decision-making even when they are no longer discriminated against? To answer this question, we designed a novel experiment to examine how discrimination affects investment decisions when the investment outcomes are ambiguous and when they are risky. In our within-subject study, we introduce discrimination by varying the chance of receiving a small bonus (5% vs 95% chance) that determines participant’s explicitly presented ranking in the group. We find that after being discriminated against (only 5% chance of a bonus), participants are more ambiguity averse but their risk attitudes do not change. This effect is stronger for men than women. We investigate whether wealth can mitigate the impact of discrimination on subsequent investments. Finally, we establish a correlation between survey and behavioural measures of ambiguity attitudes to facilitate the use of quick and low-cost measurement of ambiguity preferences.

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  Endowment effect after a loss: is it still there? (data collection in progress)

  The endowment effect describes the tendency for people who own a good to value it more than people who do not. In this paper, we propose a model based on neuroeconomics perspective and suggest that the relationship between the expectation and the ownership level can predict when the endowment effect occurs, does not occur and even reverse. We design an experiment to test our hypothesis: when subjects’ expectation exceeds the current ownership level, a reverse endowment effect will be observed. With 70 subjects, after controlling for expectation and subject misconception, we find evidence (though weak) support our hypothesis.

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  Endowment effect beyond one hour – how does the duration of ownership affect willingness to accept (data collection in progress)

  The endowment effect refers to the phenomenon that ownership of an object results in a higher valuation for that object, usually represented in the form of the WTP-WTA gap. Different models (e.g. loss aversion, diminishing marginal utility) are proposed to explain the WTP-WTA gap. However, nearly all of the existing literature focuses on the instant endowment effect, where different models generate same predictions on the WTP-WTA gap. This disables researchers to study which model is better in explaining the WTP-WTA gap. In this paper, we discuss different predictions of traditional explanations on the existence and strength of WTP-WTA gap when the duration of ownership is longer. We find loss aversion predicts that the WTA will monotonically increase with the duration of current ownership, whereas diminishing marginal utility predicts WTA will firstly increase but then decrease as time passes. In the experiment, we extend the duration of ownership to 120 minutes (1 time longer than the duration studied in the current literature) and find evidence to support diminishing marginal utility theory.

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Life is beautiful and challenging! I love my school, my supervisors and my colleagues. Besides my research work, I have many hobbies. I like running, scuba diving, traveling, etc. These hobbies make me a determined person with strong team work spirit. I also like adrenalin challenge. I believe there is always adventure out there waiting for me to explore. That's why I tried skydiving and bungee jumping! Here is the place where I would like to share my beautiful life.