We consider the response to incentives as an explanation for productivity differences within a firm that paid its workers piece rates. We provide a framework within which observed productivity differences can be decomposed into two parts: one due to differences in ability and the other due to...

We elicit subjects' willingness to pay to reduce future risk. In our experiments, subjects are given a cash endowment and a risky lottery. They report their willingness to pay to exchange the risky lottery for a safe one. Subjects play the lottery either immediately, eight weeks later, or...

The economic models of tax compliance predict that individuals should evade taxes when the expected benefit of cheating is greater than its expected cost. When this condition is fulfilled, the high compliance however observed remains a puzzle. In this paper, we investigate the role of emotions...

In the literature of financial economics, there has not been introduced yet a model which is capable of explaining at the same time high risk premium and low risk-free rate. Mehra and Prescott (1985) have found that it requires implausibly high levels of risk aversion on the part of the...

We propose a consumption-based capital asset pricing model in which the representative agent's preferences display state-dependent risk aversion. We obtain a valuation equation in which the vector of excess returns on equity includes both consumption risk as well as the risk associated with...

We estimate a dynamic programming model of schooling decisions in which the degree of risk aversion can be inferred from schooling decisions. In our model, individuals are heterogeneous with respect to school and market abilities but homogeneous with respect to the degree of risk aversion. We...

We provide a simple binomial framework to value American-style derivatives subject to trading restrictions. The optimal investment of liquid wealth is solved simultaneously with the early exercise decision of the non-traded derivative. No-short-sales constraints on the underlying asset manifest...

In the standard consumption capital asset pricing model (CCAPM), the curvature of the investor's utility function captures two aspects of preferences: as the concavity of the function increases so does his aversion to risk as well as his desire to smooth consumption intertemporally. This...

This paper estimates the rate of relative risk aversion using Euler equations based on household-level consumption data. These Euler equations are implications of market structures that do not necessarily allow agents to perfectly insure themselves. The paper focuses on tests of the...