TY - BOOK ID - 136686565 TI - Quicksand or Bedrock for Behavioral Economics? Assessing Foundational Empirical Questions AU - Stango, Victor. AU - Yoong, Joanne. AU - Zinman, Jonathan. AU - National Bureau of Economic Research. PY - 2017 PB - Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:136686565 AB - Behavioral economics lacks empirical evidence on some foundational empirical questions. We adapt standard elicitation methods to measure multiple behavioral factors per person in a representative U.S. sample, along with financial condition, cognitive skills, financial literacy, classical preferences and demographics. Individually, B-factors are prevalent, distinct from other decision inputs, and correlate negatively with financial outcomes in richly-conditioned regressions. Conditioning further on other B-factors does not change the results, validating common practice of modeling B-factors separately. Corrections for low task/survey effort modestly strengthen the results. Our findings provide bedrock empirical foundations for behavioral economics, and offer methodological guidance for research designs. ER -