Preference Alignment from Choices and Response Times

This talk studies how response times can be used together with choice data to recover latent preferences. We propose a general methodology for recovering preference parameters from data on choices and response times. Our methods yield estimates with fast convergence rates when specialized to the popular Drift Diffusion Model (DDM), but are broadly applicable to generalizations of the DDM as well as to alternative models of decision making that make use of response time data. An application to intertemporal choice illustrates that response times are not just auxiliary data: they improve prediction and change the substantive estimates we obtain. Based on joint work with Federico Echenique and Michael I. Jordan.