Measuring Subjective Expectations in Developing Countries: A Critical Review and New Evidence

The majority of economic decisions are forward-looking and thus involve expectations of future outcomes. Understanding the expectations that individuals have is thus of crucial importance to designing and evaluating policies in health, education, finance, migration, social protection, and many other...

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Main Authors:	Delavande, Adeline, Gine, Xavier, McKenzie, David
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data Data Access C810 Expectations Speculations D840 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development O120
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5628

id	okr-10986-5628
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-56282021-04-23T14:02:23Z Measuring Subjective Expectations in Developing Countries: A Critical Review and New Evidence Delavande, Adeline Gine, Xavier McKenzie, David Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data Data Access C810 Expectations Speculations D840 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development O120 The majority of economic decisions are forward-looking and thus involve expectations of future outcomes. Understanding the expectations that individuals have is thus of crucial importance to designing and evaluating policies in health, education, finance, migration, social protection, and many other areas. However, the majority of developing country surveys are static in nature and many do not elicit subjective expectations of individuals. Possible reasons given for not collecting this information include fears that poor, illiterate individuals do not understand probability concepts, that it takes far too much time to ask such questions, or that the answers add little value. This paper provides a critical review and new analysis of subjective expectations data from developing countries and refutes each of these concerns. We find that people in developing countries can generally understand and answer probabilistic questions, such questions are not prohibitive in time to ask, and the expectations are useful predictors of future behavior and economic decisions. The paper discusses the different methods used for eliciting such information, the key methodological issues involved, and the open research questions. The available evidence suggests that collecting expectations data is both feasible and valuable, suggesting that it should be incorporated into more developing country surveys. 2012-03-30T07:33:45Z 2012-03-30T07:33:45Z 2011 Journal Article Journal of Development Economics 03043878 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5628 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data Data Access C810 Expectations Speculations D840 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development O120
spellingShingle	Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data Data Access C810 Expectations Speculations D840 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development O120 Delavande, Adeline Gine, Xavier McKenzie, David Measuring Subjective Expectations in Developing Countries: A Critical Review and New Evidence
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	The majority of economic decisions are forward-looking and thus involve expectations of future outcomes. Understanding the expectations that individuals have is thus of crucial importance to designing and evaluating policies in health, education, finance, migration, social protection, and many other areas. However, the majority of developing country surveys are static in nature and many do not elicit subjective expectations of individuals. Possible reasons given for not collecting this information include fears that poor, illiterate individuals do not understand probability concepts, that it takes far too much time to ask such questions, or that the answers add little value. This paper provides a critical review and new analysis of subjective expectations data from developing countries and refutes each of these concerns. We find that people in developing countries can generally understand and answer probabilistic questions, such questions are not prohibitive in time to ask, and the expectations are useful predictors of future behavior and economic decisions. The paper discusses the different methods used for eliciting such information, the key methodological issues involved, and the open research questions. The available evidence suggests that collecting expectations data is both feasible and valuable, suggesting that it should be incorporated into more developing country surveys.
format	Journal Article
author	Delavande, Adeline Gine, Xavier McKenzie, David
author_facet	Delavande, Adeline Gine, Xavier McKenzie, David
author_sort	Delavande, Adeline
title	Measuring Subjective Expectations in Developing Countries: A Critical Review and New Evidence
title_short	Measuring Subjective Expectations in Developing Countries: A Critical Review and New Evidence
title_full	Measuring Subjective Expectations in Developing Countries: A Critical Review and New Evidence
title_fullStr	Measuring Subjective Expectations in Developing Countries: A Critical Review and New Evidence
title_full_unstemmed	Measuring Subjective Expectations in Developing Countries: A Critical Review and New Evidence
title_sort	measuring subjective expectations in developing countries: a critical review and new evidence
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5628
_version_	1764395732336377856

Measuring Subjective Expectations in Developing Countries: A Critical Review and New Evidence

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