Examining Income Expectations in the College and Early Post-College Periods: New Distributional Tests of Rational Expectations
利用Berea面板研究的纵向概率预期数据，提出两种新方法检验理性预期，发现考虑个体信念分布的高阶矩信息能揭示均值检验未发现的违背，且年轻人低估了未来收入的不确定性。
Abstract Using unique longitudinal probabilistic expectations data from the Berea Panel Study, which cover both college and early post-college periods, we examine young adults’ beliefs about their future incomes. We introduce two new approaches to testing whether, ex ante, agents exhibit Rational Expectations. We show that taking into account the additional information about higher moments of individual belief distributions contained in probabilistic expectations data reveals violations of Rational Expectations that are not detected by existing mean-based tests. Empirically, we find that our subjects underestimate the level of uncertainty they face about future incomes.