| 1. |
- Hardardottir, Hjördis
(författare)
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Long term stability of time preferences and the role of the macroeconomic situation
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Psychology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-4870. ; 60, s. 21-36
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We look at the stability of survey based subjective time preferences over time using data from a Dutch panel survey with a long time horizon and find that the ranking of individual time preferences is stable. Simple observation of the aggregated measured time preferences reveals instability in aggregated preferences. In order to shed light on this instability we look at the relationship between the individual socio-economic situation and time preferences and the macroeconomic situation and time preferences. While we find no clear relationship between socio-economic situation and time preferences, we find that for the sample as a whole patience is positively correlated with economic growth, but negatively correlated with income inequality. When studying how the estimations differ across income groups we observe that there is a considerable asymmetry in how different income groups react to changes in the macroeconomic situation.
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| 2. |
- Hardardottir, Hjördis
(författare)
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Many Balls in the Air Make Time Fly: The Effect of Multitasking on Time Perception and Time Preferences
- 2019
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this paper, we study how increasing the cognitive demands of multitasking affects time preferences. The novelty of this paper is that it studied how time perception mediates the effect of multitasking on time preferences. Results from experimental psychology have demonstrated that people tend to experience the passage of time as quicker when they are busy with cognitively-demanding tasks. If time is experienced as passing faster, the future should be experienced as being closer, and patience should increase. However, a standard prediction from behavioral economics is that being cognitively loaded leads to less patient decisions. Our hypothesis is that increases in patience, driven by the speeding up of time, and decreases in patience, driven by decreased cognitive capacity, added together explain the total effect of increasing the cognitive demands of multitasking on time preferences. We also shed light on whether the observed relationship between time preferences and time perception within subjects is mirrored when comparing between subjects.
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| 3. |
- Hardardottir, Hjördis
(författare)
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On the Aggregate Stability of Time Preferences
- 2016
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We look at the stability of survey based subjective time preferences over time. Using data from a Dutch panel survey spanning the period 1998 to 2012, the stability of subjective time preferences at the aggregate level and at the individual level are studied. While aggregate preferences are clearly unstable, individual subjective time preferences are relatively stable over time. In order to shed light on the observed instability in aggregated time preferences we look at the relationship between the macroeconomic situation and time preferences. We find that for the sample as a whole patience is positively correlated with economic growth, but negatively correlated with income inequality. When studying how the estimations differ across income groups we observe that there is a considerable asymmetry in how different income groups react to changes in the macroeconomic situation.
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| 4. |
- Hardardottir, Hjördis, et al.
(författare)
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Parameterizing standard measures of income and health inequality using choice experiments
- 2021
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Ingår i: Health Economics. - : Wiley. - 1099-1050 .- 1057-9230. ; 30:10, s. 2531-2546
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- When measuring inequality using conventional inequality measures, ethical assumptions about distributional preferences are often implicitly made. In this paper, we ask whether the ethical assumptions underlying the concentration index for income-related health inequality and the Gini index for income inequality are supported in a representative sample of the Swedish population using an internet-based survey. We find that the median subject has preferences regarding income-related health inequality that are in line with the ethical assumptions implied by the concentration index, but put higher weight on the poor than what is implied by the Gini index of income inequality. We find that women and individuals with a poorer health status put higher weight on the poor than men and healthier individuals. Ethically flexible inequality measures, such as the s-Gini index and the extended concentration index, imply that researchers have to choose from a toolbox of infinitely many inequality indices. The results of this paper are indicative of which indices (i.e. which parameter values) reflect the views of the population regarding how inequality should be defined.
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| 5. |
- Hardardottir, Hjördis, et al.
(författare)
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Risk aversion, noise, and optimal investments
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Portfolio Management. - : Pageant Media US. - 0095-4918 .- 2168-8656. ; 43:3, s. 51-59
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In contrast to the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), the noisy market hypothesis (NMH) asserts that prices are but noisy indications of fundamental values. The authors study losses in certainty equivalents of investing according to one hypothesis (NMH or EMH) when the other is true. Their findings suggest that, for reasonable parameter values, investing according to the EMH when the NMH is true yields lower losses than investing according to the NMH when the EMH is true. Further, investing according to the right hypothesis is much more important for risk-tolerant investors than for risk-averse investors.
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| 6. |
- Hardardottir, Hjördis
(författare)
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Time and inequality - A study of individual preferences
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis consists of three papers that study individual preferences. The focus of the first two papers is on time preferences. In the third paper, preferences regarding how inequality in health and income should be defined are elicited.In the first paper, we study the long-term stability of survey-based subjective time preferences using a Dutch household survey panel. We find that while the individual ranking of survey-based subjective time preferences is stable over time, there are considerable shifts in the aggregate over time. To shed light on the observed instability, we first study whether the observed shifts can be explained by shifts in the socioeconomic situation of individuals over the period studied, but find no evidence supporting this. We then study whether the macroeconomic situation at the regional level explains the variation in the aggregated subjective time preferences. Our findings show that economic growth is positively correlated with patience, while income inequality is negatively correlated with patience. Moreover, we find considerable heterogeneity in the relationship between the macroeconomic situation and the survey-based measure of subjective time preferences across income groups.In the second paper, we utilize experimental methods to investigate whether time preferences are context-dependent. More precisely, we study whether time preferences are affected when the cognitive demands of multitasking increase. In our within-subject laboratory setting, multitasking is present in both the treatment and the control tasks and consists of secondary tasks that pop up, demanding subjects' attention from time to time. The secondary tasks are easy in the control group but difficult in the treatment group. The novelty of this paper is that it studies how time perception and cognitive capacity mediate the effect of multitasking demands on time preferences. Results from experimental psychology show that time is experienced as passing quicker when people are cognitively busy. As a result, people perceive the future as being closer, which, in turn, leads to more patience. Conversely, a standard prediction from behavioral economics is that being under cognitive load leads to less patient decisions due to lower cognitive capacity available for the temporal task. Our hypothesis is that when the cognitive demands of multitasking increase, increases in patience, driven by the speeding up of time, and decreases in patience, driven by cognitive deficiency, added together explain the total effect of increasing the cognitive demands of multitasking on time preferences. We find strong evidence for the channel of time perception but fail to find support for the channel of cognitive capacity. In the third paper, we study whether the ethical assumptions regarding the weighting structure underlying the Gini index for income inequality and the concentration index for income-related inequality in health are in line with the views of the Swedish population. Extended versions of these two indices that allow for different weighting structures by incorporating a weighting parameter have been developed. Using an Internet-based survey that was sent out to a representative sample of the Swedish population, we elicit this individual weighting parameter, which describes the relative weight each participant puts on the poorer part of the income distribution relative to the richer part of the distribution when inequality is assessed. Our results show that the estimated weighting parameter of the median respondent for income-related inequality in health is in line with the underlying weighting assumptions of the concentration index. For income inequality, on the other hand, our results show that the median respondent puts higher weight on the poorer part than what is implied by the Gini index. We link the estimated weighting parameters to a variety of socioeconomic background variables, health behavior, and survey-based measures of attitudes and preferences. We find that women and individuals with poorer health status put higher weight on the poorer part when assessing inequality than men and healthier individuals. Our results suggest which weighting parameters' values are reasonable to use when inequality is measured in a Swedish context.
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| 7. |
- Hardardottir, Hjördis, et al.
(författare)
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What Kind of Inequality Do You Prefer? Evaluating Measures of Income and Health Inequality Using Choice Experiments
- 2019
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- When measuring inequality using conventional inequality measures, ethical assumptions about distributional preferences are often implicitly made. In this paper, we ask whether the ethical assumptions underlying the concentration index for income-related inequality in health and the Gini index for income inequality are supported in a representative sample of the Swedish population using an internet-based survey. We find that the median subject has preferences regarding income-related inequality in health that are in line with the ethical assumptions implied by the concentration index, but put higher weight on the poor than what is implied by the Gini index of income inequality. We find that women and individuals with a poorer health status put higher weight on the poor than men and healthier individuals. Ethically flexible inequality measures, such as the s-Gini index and the extended concentration index, imply that researchers have to choose from a toolbox of infinitely many inequality indices. The results of this paper are indicative of which indices (i.e. which parameter values) reflect the views of the population regarding how inequality should be defined.
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| 8. |
- Thorell, Kaisa, 1983, et al.
(författare)
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The Helicobacter pylori Genome Project: insights into H. pylori population structure from analysis of a worldwide collection of complete genomes
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - 2041-1723. ; 14:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Helicobacter pylori, a dominant member of the gastric microbiota, shares co-evolutionary history with humans. This has led to the development of genetically distinct H. pylori subpopulations associated with the geographic origin of the host and with differential gastric disease risk. Here, we provide insights into H. pylori population structure as a part of the Helicobacter pylori Genome Project (HpGP), a multi-disciplinary initiative aimed at elucidating H. pylori pathogenesis and identifying new therapeutic targets. We collected 1011 well-characterized clinical strains from 50 countries and generated high-quality genome sequences. We analysed core genome diversity and population structure of the HpGP dataset and 255 worldwide reference genomes to outline the ancestral contribution to Eurasian, African, and American populations. We found evidence of substantial contribution of population hpNorthAsia and subpopulation hspUral in Northern European H. pylori. The genomes of H. pylori isolated from northern and southern Indigenous Americans differed in that bacteria isolated in northern Indigenous communities were more similar to North Asian H. pylori while the southern had higher relatedness to hpEastAsia. Notably, we also found a highly clonal yet geographically dispersed North American subpopulation, which is negative for the cag pathogenicity island, and present in 7% of sequenced US genomes. We expect the HpGP dataset and the corresponding strains to become a major asset for H. pylori genomics.
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