Economics have long associated decision making wit optimization. The decision maker chooses an action from a known choice set C. he chosen action maximizes a known real-valued objective function F (.): C -- R. Optimization assumes enough knowledge of C and f(.) to determine an optimal action....

The potential impact of nonresponse on election polls is well known and frequently acknowledged. Yet measurement and reporting of polling error has focused solely on sampling error, represented by the margin of error of a poll. Survey statisticians have long recommended measurement of the total...

An important practical objective of empirical studies of treatment response is to provide decision makers with information useful in choosing treatments. Often the decision maker is a planner who must choose treatments for the members of a heterogeneous population; for example, a physician may...

This paper analyzes the probabilistic measures of job insecurity that have recently become available through the nationwide Survey of Economic Expectations (SEE). Since 1994, employed SEE respondents have been asked questions eliciting their subjective probabilities of job loss in the coming...

Economists studying public policy have generally assumed that the relevant social planner knows how policy affects population behavior. Planners typically do not possess all of this knowledge, so there is reason to consider policy formation with partial knowledge of policy impacts. Here I...