We explore the relationship between reported job satisfaction and own wage, relative wage and average comparison group wage; allowing for asymmetry in these responses across genders. We find that the choice of relevant comparison group is affected by gender in Britain; men display behaviour...

This paper develops a two-sector general equilibrium model in which firms in the primary economy have to create workplaces prior to production and product market competition. For this, we introduce the endogenous sunk cost approach with two-stage decisions of firms from IO in the macro-labor...

We develop a theory of prosocial behavior that combines heterogeneity in individual altruism and greed with concerns for social reputation or self-respect. Rewards or punishments (whether material or image-related) create doubt about the true motive for which good deeds are performed and this...

Prominent economic theories have emphasized the role of commonly held perceptions and expectations for determining macroeconomic outcomes. A key empirical question is how such collectively held beliefs are formed. We use the FIFA World Cup 2006 as a natural experiment. We provide direct evidence...

I develop a model of ideologies as collectively sustained (yet individually rational) distortions in beliefs concerning the proper scope of governments versus markets. In processing and interpreting signals of the efficacy of public and market provision of education, health insurance, pensions,...

It is a puzzle why people often evaluate consequences of choices separately (narrow bracketing) rather than jointly (broad bracketing). We study the hypothesis that a present-biased individual, who faces two tasks, may bracket his goals narrowly for motivational reasons. Goals motivate because...

This paper investigates collective denial and willful blindness in groups, organizations and markets. Agents with anticipatory preferences, linked through an interaction structure, choose how to interpret and recall public signals about future prospects. Wishful thinking (denial of bad news) is...

This paper focuses on the time allocation of spouses and the impact of economic variables. We present a stylized model of the time allocation of spouses to illustrate the expected impact of wages and non-labour income. The empirical model simultaneously specifies three time-use choices – paid...