Economics Seminar（2017-08）

Title: Attitudinal Consequences of Random Experience: Evidence from Beijing Car Lottery

Speaker: Fangwen Lu, Renmin University of China

Time: Tuesday, June 20, 14:00-15:30

Place: Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract

We conducted a representative survey of participants in Beijing car  lottery. After controlling for the time of participation, whether  winning a lottery or not is random. Exploiting this exogeneity, we find  that winning the lottery makes people feel happier in general. Lottery  winners believe they had a better luck in the car lottery, and the sense  of more luck extends to other daily lottery events and even to a toss  of a coin, supporting hot hand fallacy against gambler's fallacy.  Winners are also 30 percentage point more likely to perceive the car  lottery as being fair, and the sense of feeling just also extends to  other lottery contents. However, the difference in the sense of fairness  does not translate into different views on transportation policies.  Both winners and losers are the same likely to support the restriction  of car numbers in Beijing, and vote for Beijing car lottery against  Shanghai auction. However, the ownership of car makes lottery winners  more likely to prefer free parking in a shopping mall even if this would  raise prices. We also find that college education mediates the  attitudinal bias.

Introduction

Fangwen Lu is an associate professor at Renmin University of China, who  obtained a PhD degree from UC Berkeley in 2011. She excels in using  random field experiment to explore challenges in development/labor  economics. Lu has published in leading international journals, such as  Management Science, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of  Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Labor Economics,  Journal of Public Economics.
 

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