Categories
读书有感

Social learning in Microfinance

今天偶然扫到一篇paper,三个mit jpal搞小微金融的去印度做了一个关于social learning的实验,目的就是为了看一下他们的学习过程是更符合bayesian learning呢还是DeGroot。

结论是更偏向DeGroot,大家懒到直接去用knn的原则猜一下就好了.... (落了一地冷汗)。

抄一下摘要好了。

Agents often use noisy signals from their neighbors to update their beliefs about a state of the world. The effectiveness of social learning relies on the details of how agents aggregate information from others. There are two prominent models of information aggregation in networks: (1) Bayesian learning, where agents use Bayes' rule to assess the state of the world and (2) DeGroot learning, where agents instead consider a weighted average of their neighbors' previous period opinions or actions. Agents who engage in DeGroot learning often double-count information and may not converge in the long run. We conduct a lab experiment in the field with 665 subjects across 19 villages in Karnataka, India, designed to structurally test which model best describes social learning. Seven subjects were placed into a network with common knowledge of the network structure. Subjects attempted to learn the underlying (binary) state of the world, having received independent identically distributed signals in the first period. Thereafter, in each period, subjects made guesses about the state of the world, and these guesses were transmitted to their neighbors at the beginning of the following round. We structurally estimate a model of Bayesian learning, relaxing common knowledge of Bayesian rationality by allowing agents to have incomplete information as to whether others are Bayesian or DeGroot. Our estimates show that, despite the flexibility in modeling learning in these networks, agents are robustly best described by DeGroot-learning models wherein they take a simple majority of previous guesses in their neighborhood.

 

Categories
事儿关经济

被,被,被歧视了!

今天很不爽的被歧视了,其实的原因自然是那个旷日持久的话题——经济学是文科。我好伤心啊,伤心的缘故不是被歧视,而是被自己的父母歧视,无语。老爸一句“你们那经济学是文科”就让我有种恍然一夜回到解放前的感觉……好吧,我们整天解微分差分方程、讨论什么一致性的原来都是文科做的事儿。最让我无奈的是,我爸还附加了一句“你们又不做实验”。我,我,我说什么好呢?现在实验多热啊,到处都是实验,无论是田野实验还是实验室内的行为实验,至少都是实验啊……一句话就把我们打出地球了,哎。看来真的,从现在到经济学上升为科学的境地还是需要不断努力的。

话说回来,小小抱怨完毕(*^_^*)之后,我最近确实一直在想这个社会实验的可信赖度问题。记不得是什么时候读过一篇文章说的是社会实验的各种难处,现在要用到的时候却死活想不起来那篇文章的题目了,只记得大致结论是社会实验不同于自然科学实验,结果并不能像自然科学实验那般信赖……这或许也是为什么计量经济学家们努力的再努力的开发各种计量估计方法吧。当reduced form说服力不够强的时候,structural 就开始出现拯救地球……玩笑而已哈。

最近读了一篇关于小额贷款文章,

The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation
30 May 2009, Banerjee, A., Duflo, E., Glennerster, R. & Kinnan, C.

这篇文章通篇大概只有一个估计策略,ITT,大致就是比较一下实验前后实验组和对照组的均值变化的。看完了,我就震惊了。好简单啊~比起一般看文章里面一堆IV GMM之类的,这篇文章真快达到了“老妪能解”的水平……但是对社会实验的批判总是不绝于耳,这种实验结果的可复制性(internal validity)和推广性(external validity)一直备受质疑。从这个角度上讲,目前社会实验的水平还远远达不到科学实验……所以相应的,社会实验的结果并不那么牢不可破。不过,从另一个角度上来说,我们还是在进步的是不是?我的基本观点还是,聊胜于无啊!