Do non-choice data reveal economic preferences? : Evidence from biometric data and compensation-scheme choice

Abstract

We investigate the feasibility of inferring economic choices from simple biometric non-choice data. We employ a machine learning approach to assess whether biometric data acquired during sleep, naturally occurring daily chores and participation in an experi-ment can reveal preferences for competitive and team-based compensation schemes. We find that biometric data acquired using wearable devices enable equally accurate out-of-sample prediction for compensation-scheme choice as gender and performance. Our re-sults demonstrate the feasibility of inferring economic choices from simple biometric data without observing past decisions. However, we find that biometric data recorded in nat-urally occurring environments during daily chores and sleep add little value to out-of-sample predictions. (c) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )