Hi Joel, thanks for this write-up and for the work you’re doing on this. For some context, I’m the Chief Economist at IDinsight and worked on the GW-funded study you mentioned.
A few comments:
Thanks for this work and these thoughts! I haven’t dug into the math in detail, but I’m intrigued about systematically measuring and correcting for social desirability bias. But one question: are you arguing that SDB is more likely to be an issue in the community perspective than the individual perspective? I don’t really see why this would be the case- i think SDB is likely to be present in all frames.
I’m a bit confused why you think the community perspective is more reliable than the individual perspective? It seems to me that your assumption that both methods are downward biased is pretty strong, and the conclusion that the larger of the two is “right” is not apparent.
IDinsight is quite interested in doing more work in this area. We are currently pursuing a couple of opportunities, and are interested in working with funders who want to do more work on measuring preferences and integrating them into their programs. We house this work under our Dignity Initiative, since we believe that understanding and respecting preferences are a key part of upholding the dignity of the populations we serve. If CEARCH is working on funding more work in this area, we should talk.
Open Phil is considering funding a large replication/expansion of our preference work, where we would use a number of new tools to minimize the biases pointed our in your article. If this goes forward, we’ll have a lot more to say about this problem in the coming years! Assuming it does, we’re always looking for more ideas and would be interested in brainstorming with CEARCH to add to our pile of ideas.
(1) On whether social desirability bias is an issue for VSL. My understanding is that the economics literature isn’t concerned about this (nor was IDinsight, per the report) - which makes sense to me, because when people are asked to pay to avert small risks, they consider it a pragmatic decision rather than an explicitly moral one where they have to decide whether or not to let someone die for more money. The issue is hence less salient from a moral point of view, and less likely to trigger worries about how one appears to others (kind and compassionate, or cold and selfish). Just think of how much less salient refusing to pay to install a lifebuoy next to a pond is, vs refusing to jump in to save a drowning child right now, even if statistically the former nets out in expected value to the latter.
(2) If we think that both VSL and the community perspective are flawed attempts at getting the true value, and that both are downward biased (per the reasons discussed), then the higher SBD-corrected community perspective is probably a lower bound. In fact, my main worry is that there is significant downward bias—given the strong and very cogent moral reasoning expressed by respondents in the qualitative side of the survey (“life is priceless”, “children have economic potential”), you could easily go up by one magnitude in trade-offs (i.e. 1 life to 100,000 cash transfers to double income) and still get a significant number of people going for that.
(3) & (4) Will definitely be interested in talking to your colleague at the Dignity Initiative, and will drop you an email to discuss your potential work in replicating your preference work! Am excited about your ideas, and would be happy to contribute any way I can.
Hi Joel, thanks for this write-up and for the work you’re doing on this. For some context, I’m the Chief Economist at IDinsight and worked on the GW-funded study you mentioned.
A few comments:
Thanks for this work and these thoughts! I haven’t dug into the math in detail, but I’m intrigued about systematically measuring and correcting for social desirability bias. But one question: are you arguing that SDB is more likely to be an issue in the community perspective than the individual perspective? I don’t really see why this would be the case- i think SDB is likely to be present in all frames.
I’m a bit confused why you think the community perspective is more reliable than the individual perspective? It seems to me that your assumption that both methods are downward biased is pretty strong, and the conclusion that the larger of the two is “right” is not apparent.
IDinsight is quite interested in doing more work in this area. We are currently pursuing a couple of opportunities, and are interested in working with funders who want to do more work on measuring preferences and integrating them into their programs. We house this work under our Dignity Initiative, since we believe that understanding and respecting preferences are a key part of upholding the dignity of the populations we serve. If CEARCH is working on funding more work in this area, we should talk.
Open Phil is considering funding a large replication/expansion of our preference work, where we would use a number of new tools to minimize the biases pointed our in your article. If this goes forward, we’ll have a lot more to say about this problem in the coming years! Assuming it does, we’re always looking for more ideas and would be interested in brainstorming with CEARCH to add to our pile of ideas.
Hi Dan,
Some thoughts on the points you raised:
(1) On whether social desirability bias is an issue for VSL. My understanding is that the economics literature isn’t concerned about this (nor was IDinsight, per the report) - which makes sense to me, because when people are asked to pay to avert small risks, they consider it a pragmatic decision rather than an explicitly moral one where they have to decide whether or not to let someone die for more money. The issue is hence less salient from a moral point of view, and less likely to trigger worries about how one appears to others (kind and compassionate, or cold and selfish). Just think of how much less salient refusing to pay to install a lifebuoy next to a pond is, vs refusing to jump in to save a drowning child right now, even if statistically the former nets out in expected value to the latter.
(2) If we think that both VSL and the community perspective are flawed attempts at getting the true value, and that both are downward biased (per the reasons discussed), then the higher SBD-corrected community perspective is probably a lower bound. In fact, my main worry is that there is significant downward bias—given the strong and very cogent moral reasoning expressed by respondents in the qualitative side of the survey (“life is priceless”, “children have economic potential”), you could easily go up by one magnitude in trade-offs (i.e. 1 life to 100,000 cash transfers to double income) and still get a significant number of people going for that.
(3) & (4) Will definitely be interested in talking to your colleague at the Dignity Initiative, and will drop you an email to discuss your potential work in replicating your preference work! Am excited about your ideas, and would be happy to contribute any way I can.