A fixed budget must be allocated to a finite number of different projects with uncertain outputs. The expected marginal productivity of capital in a project first increases then decreases with the amount of capital invested. Such behavior is common when output is a probability (of escaping...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) balances risks and benefits before approving pharmaceuticals, as rationality would require. But powerful behavioral biases that lead to the mishandling of uncertainty also influence its approval process. The FDA places inordinate emphasis on errors of...

Traditional decision theory distinguishes between risk and uncertainty. With risk, the probabilities of possible outcomes are known; with uncertainty, those outcomes are known, but not their probabilities. We introduce the concept of ignorance, a third, less tractable category. With ignorance,...

This paper studies decision making by successful entrepreneurs and their agents. Since entrepreneurs decisions are often influenced by their agents' advice, understanding the behavior of both involved parties is crucial in analyzing observed decisions. To this end, a sample of successful...

We examine the investment decision problem of a group whose members have heterogeneous time preferences. In particular, they have different discount factors for utility, possibly not exponential. We characterize the properties of efficient allocations of resources and of shadow prices that would...

We examine the investment decision problem of a group whose members have heterogeneous time preferences. In particular, they have different discount factors for utility, possibly not exponential. We characterize the properties of efficient allocations of resources and of shadow prices that would...

We examine the investment decision problem of a group whose members have heterogeneous time preferences. In particular, they have different discount factors for utility, possibly not exponential. We characterize the properties of efficient allocations of resources and of shadow prices that would...

We examine the investment decision problem of a group whose members have heterogeneous time preferences. In particular, they have different discount factors for utility, possibly not exponential. We characterize the properties of efficient allocations of resources and of shadow prices that would...