Economists are increasingly interested in the cognitive basis of pro-social behavior. Using response time data, several authors have claimed that "fairness is intuitive". In light of conflicting empirical evidence, we provide theoretical arguments showing under which circumstances an increase...

Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky...

The digit ratio (2D:4D) is considered a proxy for testosterone exposure in utero, and there has been a recent surge of studies testing whether 2D:4D is associated with economic preferences. Although the results are not conclusive, previous studies have reported statistically significant...

Prenatal androgens have organizational effects on brain and endocrine system development, which may have a partial impact on economic decisions. Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between prenatal testosterone and financial risk taking, yet results remain inconclusive. We...

Intuitive decision making has a large and often negative impact in economic decisions, but its measurement and quantification remains challenging. Following research from psychology, behavioral economists have often attempted to causally manipulate the balance of intuition and deliberation by...

In an experiment that elicits subjects' willingness to pay (WTP) for the outcome of a lottery, we confirm the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes described by Kahneman and Tversky. In addition, we document a systematic effect of stake sizes on the magnitude and sign of the relative risk premium,...

Many important decisions are made under stress and they often involve risky alternatives. There has been ample evidence that stress influences decision making in cognitive as well as in affective domains, but still very little is known about whether individual attitudes to risk change with...

We use personality traits to better understand the relationship between income and life satisfaction. Personality traits mediate the effect of income on life satisfaction. The effect of neuroticism, which measures sensitivity to threat and punishment, is strong in both the British Household...

Behavioral economics attempts to integrate insights from psychology, neuroscience, and sociology in order to better predict individual outcomes and develop more effective policy. While the field has been successfully applied to many areas, education has, so far, received less attention - a...

We propose that individuals consider future versions of themselves to truly be separate persons, not simply as a convenient modeling device but in terms of actual brain systems and decision]making processes. Intertemporal choices are thus quite literally strategic interactions between multiple...