Distortions in memory impose important bounds on rationality but have been largely disregarded in economics. While it is possible to learn, it is more difficult, and sometimes impossible, to unlearn. This retention effect lowers individual utility directly or via reduced productivity, and adds...

This note shows that permanent uctuations in the Cobweb model - though inconsistent with a rational expectations equilibrium - can be justified as being rational when reinterpreting the model in the theory of rational beliefs.

Many studies have found a gap between willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept that is inconsistent with standard theory. There is also evidence that the gap is eroded by experience gained in the laboratory and naturally occurring markets. This paper argues that the gap and the effects of...

This paper examines the role of simplified heuristics in the formation of preferences for public goods. Political scientists have suggested that voters use simplified heuristics based on the positions of familiar parties to infer how a proposed policy will affect them and to cast a vote in line...

The evidence from many experiments suggests that people are heterogeneous with regard to their abilities to make rational, forward looking, decisions. This raises the question when the rational types are decisive for aggregate outcomes and when the boundedly rational types shape aggregate...

There is an extensive literature claiming that it is often difficult to make use of arbitrage opportunities in nancial markets. This paper provides a new reason why existing arbitrage opportunities might not be seized. We consider a world with short-lived securities, no short-selling constraints...

We construct a dynamic theory of civil conflict hinging on inter-ethnic trust and trade. The model economy is inhabitated by two ethnic groups. Inter-ethnic trade requires imperfectly observed bilateral investments and one group has to form beliefs on the average propensity to trade of the other...

This paper aims to show that the market selection hypothesis in finance is not solely driven by the competitiveness of such markets, as was originally claimed by Alchian [1] and Friedman [4]. Within a standard intertemporal General Equilibrium framework, we allow for an agent to have enough...

I construct a theory of cultural transmission in which culture acquisition takes place in two stages, first in the family where parents transmit their own culture, and later in society where children are exposed to a wider set of cultural models. The role of models is to provide information...

We consider an economy where decision maker(s) do not know the true production function for a public good. By using Bayes rule they can learn from experience. We show that the economy may learn the truth, but that it may also converge to an inefficient policy where no further inference is...