AI Assisted Economics Measurement From Survey: Evidence from Public Employee Pension Choice

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wang, Tiancheng, Sharma, Krishna
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Wang, Tiancheng
Sharma, Krishna
author_facet Wang, Tiancheng
Sharma, Krishna
contents We develop an iterative framework for economic measurement that leverages large language models to extract measurement structure directly from survey instruments. The approach maps survey items to a sparse distribution over latent constructs through what we term a soft mapping, aggregates harmonized responses into respondent level sub dimension scores, and disciplines the resulting taxonomy through out of sample incremental validity tests and discriminant validity diagnostics. The framework explicitly integrates iteration into the measurement construction process. Overlap and redundancy diagnostics trigger targeted taxonomy refinement and constrained remapping, ensuring that added measurement flexibility is retained only when it delivers stable out of sample performance gains. Applied to a large scale public employee retirement plan survey, the framework identifies which semantic components contain behavioral signal and clarifies the economic mechanisms, such as beliefs versus constraints, that matter for retirement choices. The methodology provides a portable measurement audit of survey instruments that can guide both empirical analysis and survey design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_02604
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AI Assisted Economics Measurement From Survey: Evidence from Public Employee Pension Choice
Wang, Tiancheng
Sharma, Krishna
Econometrics
Artificial Intelligence
We develop an iterative framework for economic measurement that leverages large language models to extract measurement structure directly from survey instruments. The approach maps survey items to a sparse distribution over latent constructs through what we term a soft mapping, aggregates harmonized responses into respondent level sub dimension scores, and disciplines the resulting taxonomy through out of sample incremental validity tests and discriminant validity diagnostics. The framework explicitly integrates iteration into the measurement construction process. Overlap and redundancy diagnostics trigger targeted taxonomy refinement and constrained remapping, ensuring that added measurement flexibility is retained only when it delivers stable out of sample performance gains. Applied to a large scale public employee retirement plan survey, the framework identifies which semantic components contain behavioral signal and clarifies the economic mechanisms, such as beliefs versus constraints, that matter for retirement choices. The methodology provides a portable measurement audit of survey instruments that can guide both empirical analysis and survey design.
title AI Assisted Economics Measurement From Survey: Evidence from Public Employee Pension Choice
topic Econometrics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02604