W codziennym życiu ludzie podejmują decyzje, które mają długofalowe skutki—ile odkładać na emeryturę, czy i kiedy mieć dzieci, jaką ścieżkę edukacyjną wybrać. Standardowa teoria ekonomiczna zakłada, że podejmujemy te decyzje w sposób racjonalny: kierując się dostępnymi informacjami, kalkulując koszty i korzyści. Jednak rzeczywistość pokazuje, że często postępujemy inaczej. Popełniamy błędy, czasem z powodu braku wiedzy, ale częściej z powodu ograniczonej uwagi, niepewności i złożoności podejmowanych wyborów.
Projekt DRIFT bada, jak małe i pozornie losowe błędy decyzyjne—zwłaszcza te popełnione we wczesnych etapach życia—mogą prowadzić do poważnych, długotrwałych skutków. Skupiamy się na decyzjach trudnych do odwrócenia, takich jak posiadanie dzieci, wybór kierunku kształcenia czy planowanie emerytury. Kluczowym spostrzeżeniem jest to, że nawet jeśli błędy nie są systematycznie ukierunkowane, mogą „zastygnąć” w czasie, ponieważ zmiana raz obranego kierunku bywa kosztowna lub niemożliwa.
Badania będą łączyć analizę teoretyczną z symulacjami komputerowymi, aby zrozumieć, jak tego typu błędy się akumulują. Skupimy się m.in. na „zależności od ścieżki” (czyli jak wcześniejsze decyzje ograniczają przyszłe opcje) oraz na efekcie histerezy (czyli trwałości raz popełnionych błędów).
In everyday life, people regularly face decisions with long-term consequences—how much to save for retirement, whether and when to have children, what education path to follow. Standard economic theory assumes that individuals are rational and make choices that maximize their wellbeing based on all available information. However, both psychological research and real-world evidence show that people often deviate from this ideal. Mistakes happen—not always due to lack of intelligence or effort, but because of limited attention, uncertainty, and the sheer complexity of life’s choices.
The DRIFT project explores how small, seemingly random mistakes in decision-making—especially those made early in life—can lead to significant long-term consequences. It focuses on decisions that are difficult to reverse, such as childbearing, educational choices, or retirement planning. The key insight is that even if errors are not intentional or systematically biased, they can become “locked in” due to the irreversibility or costliness of changing course later. Over time, these early mistakes can snowball into large welfare losses, affecting not only individuals but society as a whole.
The research will use both mathematical theory and computer simulations to understand how these errors unfold over time. One key focus is to model “path dependence”—how early decisions affect later opportunities and constraints. Another goal is to analyze “hysteresis” effects, where deviations from optimal behavior persist even after circumstances improve.
Źródło finansowania | Financing: Narodowe Centrum Nauki, OPUS
Projekt realizowany | Timeline: 09/2026 -- 09/2030
Kierownik | Principal Investigator: Łukasz Woźny
Budżet łączny | Total budget: 1 299 804 zł
- wynagrodzenia dla podstawowych wykonawców | compensation to researchers: 544 000 zł
- stypendia dla młodych badaczy | scholarships for young scholars: 360 000 zł
- komputery i oprogramowanie | hardware and software: 30 000 zł
- konferencje i inne wyjazdy | conference travels: 97 000 zł
- materiały, dane i usługi obce | data, usables and outsourced services: 30 256 zł
- koszty pośrednie dla FAME | overheads for FAME: 312 091 zł
Our aim is to build a class of macroeconomic models that explicitly incorporate cognitive limitations and behavioral errors. This approach bridges the gap between micro-level behavioral evidence and macroeconomic modeling, offering new insights to understand long-run economic outcomes and allowing us to design effective public policies.
Contrary to the standard argument that small, idiosyncratic errors cancel out in large populations or over time, our core hypothesis is that even modest, consistent mistakes can have significant cumulative effects.
- H1 (Drift Hypothesis): Small, systematic cognitive errors in high-stakes, irreversible life decisions lead to large and persistent welfare losses over the life cycle.
- H2 (Macroeconomic Significance of Errors): Cognitive errors in early, irreversible life choices have economically meaningful effects at the macro level.
- H3 (Collective Compounding of Individual Errors): In collective decision settings (e.g., voting, pension design, public goods), small, systematic errors by many individuals can aggregate and result in persistent macro-level distortions.
Methodology
To evaluate these hypotheses, we will construct a dynamic overlapping-generations (OLG) model incorporating the CMM framework. This model will be empirically calibrated using micro-level data—such as household surveys, education and demographic panels—to estimate the degree of error-proneness and its distribution across the population.
Expected Outcomes
This modeling framework will allow us to quantify the impact of cognitive errors on aggregate outcomes including lifetime welfare, income inequality, and the sustainability of public systems like pensions and education subsidies. It will also assess whether targeted policy interventions can meaningfully mitigate these effects.
Collective Decision Analysis
Beyond individual choices, DRIFT also examines how errors propagate in collective or market-based decision environments. Here, individuals often perceive their influence as negligible, yet correlated mistakes across many agents can produce large-scale distortions.
Project Goals
By modeling how cognitive errors propagate both across time and through interdependent decision environments, DRIFT aims to provide a deeper understanding of how bounded rationality affects economic dynamics. The project will also explore under what conditions institutional design or behavioral interventions (e.g., nudges, defaults, educational tools) can buffer these effects and improve long-term outcomes.