This paper develops a simple but important point which is often overlooked: It is quite possible that the best policy for a rational, optimizing agent is to do nothing for long periods of time--even if new, relevant information becomes available. We illustrate this point using the market for...

This paper presents an extension of the life-cycle permanent-income model of consumption to the case of a durable good whose purchase involves lumpy trans- actions costs. Where individual behavior is concerned, the implications of the model are different in some respects from those of standard...

We use traffic data from a series of experiments in the United States and Israel to examine how illegal behavior is deterred by various penalty schemes and whether deterrence varies with age, income, driving record and criminal record. We find that red light running decreases sharply in response...