Browsing by Author "Šťastný, Dan"
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- ItemThe economics of being stupid: a note on (ir)rationality in economics(Technická Univerzita v Liberci, ) Šťastný, Dan; Ekonomická fakultaEconomists’ habit of imputing rational motives to all human behavior gives rise to ‘rational riddles’: rational explanations for seemingly irrational behavior. In the article I argue that economists’ solutions to these riddles are, despite their sophistication, of limited scientific value as they describe mechanisms that are never both new and correct: they may be empirically correct but not new as these mechanisms have been practiced (hence known) by some people before; or they are genuinely new (previously unknown to anybody), but empirically wrong as they fail to account for the real reasons of observed behavior. I further show that the hypothesized solutions to the riddles could be easily tested by consulting the people whose behavior is examined, and point to the strange lack of economistsefforts to do so. Finally I present results of a micro survey relating to one such rational riddle: ticket underpricing (why prices of tickets for various events do not adjust to eliminate the excess demand). By interviewing managers of theatres known to sell tickets at prices that create lines, I present some evidence showing that it is much easier to explain the observed behavior in terms of plain ignorance of some elementary economic principles or facts rather than in terms of some economic sophistication on the part of the managers. No interviewees, for example, explicitly related the existence of lines to ticket underpricing, and some actually denied any link there even if prompted. I conclude by pointing to the real cost to the economic profession stemming from its decision to ignore the possibility of irrationality in economistsresearch program.
- ItemInquiry into high school students’ utility function(Technická Univerzita v Liberci, ) Janáček, Julius; Šťastný, Dan; Ekonomická fakultaThis study uses data from our life-satisfaction survey of 1,414 students in 11 high schools in Northern parts of Czech Republic in the spring 2017 to discover certain parts of high school students’’ utility function. This is potentially useful for audiences ranging from macro-level policy-makers to teachers to parents to the students themselves in improving the design of policies and practices that either address life-satisfaction directly or affect it indirectly by pursuing other objectives. We use ordered logit and OLS regression models in various specifications to explore how different factors of students’ life from various domains (e.g. housing, economic, lifestyle, personal) associate with their self-assessed degree (0-10 scale) of life satisfaction or happiness. The effects of independent variables were investigated both separately within their own domain, and in all-inclusive models while always controlling for gender, age and specific effects of particular schools. The results confirm quite robustly several well-established and expected effects, namely the positive effects of one’s relations to parents and friends, or one’s health conditions, and negative effects of smoking tobacco or being discriminated. The findings also reveal some relatively unestablished facts such as a large positive effect of being needed, or the negative effect of commuting time. The outright surprising results include the irrelevance of alcohol consumption (contrary to expected negative effects and in contrast to identified negative effects of tobacco consumption) or of the absolute amount of money available (contrary to expected positive effects); the positive effect of cannabis use and of being a vegan; or the partially negative effect of engaging in arts or creative activities. While the above results are not all easily turned into recommendations for students, their parents, school administrators or policy makers on how to secure a happy life of teenagers, there are a few that may go beyond the obvious: avoid smoking, consider commuting time seriously, encourage and nurture good relations. Caveats regarding external validity apply.