Xueting Wang

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  Present bias for monetary and dietary rewards: Evidence from Chinese teenagers, under review

  Economists model self-control problems through time-inconsistent preferences. Empirical tests of these preferences largely rely on experimental elicitation methods 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 money predict field behaviours better than preferences elicited over foods.

  Link to paper
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  Increased risk-taking, not loss tolerance, drives adolescents’ propensity to choose risky prospects more often under peer observation, revision requested from the 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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  Do people show present-biased time preference towards money? A meta-analysis (manuscript in preparation)

  Quasi-hyperbolic discounting is one of the most well-known and used models to capture self-control problems. The underlying assumption of the model is that agents have a “present bias” toward current consumption, as all future rewards are downweighed relative to rewards in the present, in addition to the standard exponential discounting of delayed rewards. To create a meta-analytic dataset of present bias estimates, we searched all major research databases using the intersection of a set of methodology keywords with a set of topic keywords. Of 2,351 articles from this search, both published and unpublished, 110 articles survived with inclusion criterion “reported point-estimated present bias parameter”, and a further 78 with inclusion criterion “present bias can be inferred”. We calculate the “average” present bias for monetary rewards and investigate how the type of study (e.g. experimental vs. observational; field vs. lab), methodology (e.g. convex time budget, longitudinal), subject pool, payment method, and publication status of a study affect the estimated magnitude of present bias.

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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.