现代产业经济学系列讲座第242期

时    间：2023年5月23日（周二）16:00-17:30

地    点：管理学院思源楼326室

题    目：Attention Theory, Soft and Hard

主讲人：Chew Soo Hong（周恕弘）教授     西南财经大学

主持人：姚志勇   教授

摘    要：

The human brain, consuming a mere 10 watts, is miserly in minimizing energy expenditure constantly and unconsciously, giving rise to a volatile and context-sensitive attentional process. This talk builds on both "soft" modeling based on revealed choice and "hard" modeling which seeks additionally biological accuracy. In the soft attention theory (SAT), the generally varying utility of a lottery emerges from potentially volatile decision weights. In binary choice, SAT always exhibits EU-conforming behavior in the correlated Allais common-consequence problem if and only if attention is symmetric, which coincides formally with Regret Theory and Salience Theory. We further offer a hard attention theory (HAT) through a quartet of neurotransmitters – dopamine (DA), serotonin (5HT), acetylcholine (ACh), and norepinephrine (NE). Building on the application of DA and 5HT tones to model the loss-gain differentiation in risk attitude (Zhong et al., 2009), we hypothesize that ACh and NE tones modulate respectively the top-down and bottom-up components of the attention function in SAT. This yields predictions which are tested in a preregistered placebo-controlled RCT experiment using nicotine (ACh agonist) and Ventolin (NE agonist) to manipulate top-down attention and bottom-up salience. Preliminary findings will be discussed.

主讲人简介：

Chew Soo Hong is Chief Professor (首席教授) at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, where he directs its China Center for Behavioral Economics and Finance. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, which awarded him the Leonard J. Savage thesis prize, and of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory. Chew is an Emeritus Professor (终身荣休教授) at NUS and has previously taught at HKUST, UC Irvine, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Arizona. He has published in well-regarded journals in economics such as Econometrica, JPE, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory, etc.

应用经济学系

2023-5-19