Twenty-seven percent of the Union Army prisoners captured July 1863 or later died in captivity. At Andersonville the death rate may have been as high as 40 percent. How did men survive such horrific conditions? Using two independent data sets we find that friends had a statistically significant...

We document three remarkable features of the Opower program, in which social comparison- based home energy reports are repeatedly mailed to more than six million households nationwide. First, initial reports cause high-frequency "action and backsliding," but these cycles attenuate over time....

The endowment effect is among the best known findings in behavioral economics, and has been used as evidence for theories of reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion. However, a recent literature has questioned the robustness of the effect in the laboratory, as well as its relevance in...

The old age provisions of the Medicaid program were designed to insure poor retirees against medical expenses. However, it is the rich who are most likely to live long and face expensive medical conditions when very old. We estimate a rich structural model of savings and endogenous medical...

This paper incorporates two empirically-grounded insights into a dynamic life cycle portfolio choice model: the fact that investors forego the opportunity to accumulate job-specific skills when they spend time managing their own money, and the observation that efficiency in financial decision...

A central justification for social insurance and for other policies aimed at retirement savings is that individuals may fail to make adequate provision during their working years. Much research has focused on myopia and other behavioral limitations. Yet little attention has been devoted to how...