Lab-in-the-field experiments on inconsistency, delay discounting, and homophily

Abstract

This thesis contributes to the literature on adolescent preferences through field experiments, exploring their relationship with personal characteristics such as cognitive skills, academic performance, and educational expectations. Additionally, certain aspects of their school environment are explored, which may or may not influence their decision-making process. A particularly relevant aspect is the role of social interactions, and the relationships adolescents form within their school environment. In this regard, part of this thesis focuses on the phenomenon of link formation, analyzing how they form links with those who share similar characteristics. This process of forming links with those who are more similar is known as homophily, a key factor in the dynamics of social relationships within the school environment. The studies are based on data collected in two countries, Spain and El Salvador, during the years 2022 and 2023, using a “Lab-in-the-field” methodology. The sample focuses on adolescents from 33 schools in Spain and 12 in El Salvador. The data was collected following the same protocols for gathering, tasks, and tools1 . It is important to highlight the use of tasks traditionally used to elicit economic preferences and aspects of decision-making in adult populations, adapted with strong visual components to collect these data in adolescents. In addition to tasks related to economic preferences, cognitive skills, academic performance, and social interaction, sociodemographic data and other complementary tasks were obtained.

El documento es la parte pública de la tesis que se encuentra embargada.