Subjective Belief Distributions and the Characterization of Economic Literacy

Authors

Amalia Di Girolamo, University of Birmingham
Glenn Harrison, Georgia State University
Morten Lau, Copenhagen Business School
Todd Swarthout, Georgia State University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-1-2015

Abstract

We characterize the literacy of an individual in a domain by their elicited subjective belief distribution over the possible responses to a question posed in that domain. By eliciting the distribution, rather than just the answers to true/false or multiple choice questions, we can directly measure the confidence that an individual has about their knowledge of some fact. We consider literacy across several financial and economic domains. We find considerable demographic heterogeneity in the degree of literacy. We also measure the degree of consistency within a sample about their knowledge, even when that knowledge is imperfect.

Comments

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Recommended Citation

Di Girolamo, Amalia; Harrison, Glenn; Lau, Morten; and Swarthout, Todd, "Subjective Belief Distributions and the Characterization of Economic Literacy" (2015). ExCEN Working Papers. 33.
https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/excen_workingpapers/33