Economics Insights @ CBS

People can be surprisingly insensitive to quantities in valuation judgments—a phenomenon called scope insensitivity, which is generally attributed to the operation of affective processes in judgment. Building on research showing that affect is inherently a decision-making system of the present, we propose that scope insensitivity is more likely to be observed in decisions that are psychologically proximate to the immediate self.

Two modern economic trends are the increase in firm size and advances in information technology. We explore the hypothesis that big data disproportionately benefits big firms. Because they have more economic activity and a longer firm history, large firms have produced more data. As processor speed rises, abundant data attracts more financial analysis. Data analysis improves investors’ forecasts and reduces equity uncertainty, reducing the firm’s cost of capital. When investors can process more data, large firm investment costs fall by more, enabling large firms to grow larger.

Governments are present-biased toward spending. Fiscal rules are deficit limits that trade off commitment to not overspend and flexibility to react to shocks. We compare coordinated rules, chosen jointly by a group of countries, to uncoordinated rules. If governments' present bias is small, coordinated rules are tighter than uncoordinated rules: individual countries do not internalize the redistributive effect of interest rates. However, if the bias is large, coordinated rules are slacker: countries do not internalize the disciplining effect of interest rates.