We investigate the relationship between (a) official information on COVID-19 infection and death case counts; (b) beliefs about such case counts, at present and in the future; (c) beliefs about average infection chance--in principle, directly calculable from (b); and (d) self-reported...

Information is often embedded in memorable contexts, which may cue the asymmetric recall of similar past news through associative memory. We design a theory-driven experiment, in which participants observe signals about hypothetical companies. Here, identical signal realizations are communicated...

The largest economic cost of the COVID-19 pandemic could arise from changes in behavior long after the immediate health crisis is resolved. A potential source of such a long-lived change is scarring of beliefs, a persistent change in the perceived probability of an extreme, negative shock in the...

We estimate the degree of 'stickiness' in aggregate consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption habits) for thirteen advanced economies. We find that, after controlling for measurement error, consumption growth has a high degree of autocorrelation, with a stickiness...

Although the theoretical importance of expectations in decision-making is well-known to economists, only a few empirical papers investigate the impact of individual subjective expectations on economic outcomes. This paper examines the link between expectations of future job losses and the...

Macroeconomic models often invoke consumption "habits" to explain the substantial persistence of aggregate consumption growth. But a large literature has found no evidence of habits in microeconomic datasets that measure the behavior of individual households. We show that the apparent conflict...

Dynamically and statically optimal Pigouvian subsidies on durables will differ in a growing economy. For durables with positive externalities, such as sanitation, statically optimal subsidies will typically grow. However, in a dynamic game, governments can most cheaply induce optimal purchasing...

Questionnaire surveys undertaken in 1988 and annually from 2003 through 2014 of recent homebuyers in each of four U.S. metropolitan areas shed light on their expectations and reasons for buying during the recent housing boom and subsequent collapse. They also provide insight into the reasons for...

Economic research on entertainment is scant despite its large share of time use. We test economic theories of belief-based utility in the context of video-game engagement. Using data on 2.8 million matches from League of Legends, we find evidence supporting reference-dependent preferences, loss...

Many consumers below the top of the distribution of a representative population by cognitive abilities barely react to monetary and fiscal policies that aim to stimulate consumption and borrowing, even when they are financially unconstrained and despite substantial debt capacity. Differences in...