“Waste not want not” expresses our culture’s aversion to waste. “I could have gotten the samething for less” is a sentiment that can diminish pleasure in a transaction. We study people’s willingnessto “pay” to avoid this spoiler. In one scenario, participants imagined they were...

Die menschliche Art ist eine Spezies, die durch Einsatz von Institutionen undNormensystemen kollektive Güter (oder Übel) bereitzustellen vermag.1 Kollektive Güterbilden typischerweise Antworten auf Kollektivgut-Probleme. Eine besonders wichtige Klassesolcher Kollektivgut-Probleme entsteht im...

Economists usually treat human behavior as being determined by the shadow of the future, while most other social scientists point to the shadow of the past. This paper considers experimental evidence relevant to the controversy and tries to reconcile both explanations of human behavior with each...