Belief Elicitation and Behavioral Incentive Compatibility

Subjective beliefs are crucial for economic inference, yet behavior can challenge the elicitation. We propose that belief elicitation should be incentive compatible not only theoretically but also in a de facto behavioral sense. To demonstrate, we show binarized scoring rule, state-of-the-art elicitation, violates two weak conditions compatibility: (i) within information on incentives increases deviations from truthful reporting; and (ii) pure choice over set of incentives, most deviate theorized maximizer. Moreover, document systematic center-biased, elicited substantially distort inference. (JEL D83, D91)