We present an infinite-horizon model of moral standards where self-esteem and unconscious drives play key roles. In the model, an individual receives random temptations (such as bribe offers) and must decide which to resist. Individual actions depend both on conscious intent and a type...

Most economic analyses presume that there are limited differences in the prior beliefs of individuals, as assumption most often justified by the argument that sufficient common experiences and observations will eliminate disagreements. We investigate this claim using a simple model of Bayesian...

There are a host of potentially risky behaviors in which youth engage, which have important implications for both their well being as youth and their life prospects. The past decade has seen dramatic shifts in the intensity with which youths pursue these risky activities: for example, youth...

This paper studies the interactions between an individual's self esteem and his social environment in the workplace, at school, and in personal relationships. Because a person generally has only imperfect knowledge of his own abilities, people who derive benefits from his performance (parent,...

Economists have long been ambivalent about whether the discipline should focus on the analysis of markets or should be concerned with social interactions more generally. Recently the discipline has sought to broaden its scope while maintaining the rigor of modern economic analysis. Major...

This paper uses a unique data set to measure peer effects among college age roommates. Freshman year roommates and dormmates are randomly assigned at Dartmouth College. I find that in this group, peer effects are very important in determining levels of academic effort and in decisions to join...

People's value for their own time is a key input in evaluating public policies: evaluations should account for time taken away from work or leisure as a result of policy. Using rich choice data collected from farming households in western Kenya, we show that households exhibit non-transitive...

Personal experiences of economic outcomes, from global financial crises to individual-level job losses, can shape individual beliefs, risk attitudes, and choices for years to come. A growing literature on experience effects shows that individuals act as if past outcomes that they experienced...

Many models from epidemiology are not designed to capture tradeoffs between health and economic well-being and few are equipped to predict how these tradeoffs interact with individuals' preferences to influence behavior. Policies based on such models may not reflect societal preferences or...

Recent theoretical and empirical work characterizes attention as a limited resource that decision-makers strategically allocate. There has been less research on the dynamic interdependence of attention: how paying attention now may affect performance later. In this paper, we exploit...