Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky...

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...

Behavioral economics attempts to integrate insights from psychology, neuroscience, and sociology in order to better predict individual outcomes and develop more effective policy. While the field has been successfully applied to many areas, education has, so far, received less attention - a...

This paper evaluates the prospects for the emerging field of neuroeconomics to shed light on traditional positive and normative economic questions. It argues that the potential for meaningful contributions, though often misunderstood and frequently overstated, is nevertheless present.

We use two different approaches to measure intertemporal preferences. First we employ the classical method of inferring preferences from a series of choices (subjects choose between $X now or $Y in D days). Second we adopt the novel approach of inferring preferences using only response time data...

A model is proposed in which stochastic choice results from noise in cognitive processing rather than random variation in preferences. The mental process used to make a choice is nonetheless optimal, subject to a constraint on available information-processing capacity that is partially motivated...

Agency problems in economics virtually always entail self-interested agency exhibiting "insufficient" loyalty to principal. Social psychology also has a literature, mainly derived from work by Stanley Milgram, on issues of agency, but this emphasizes excessive loyalty -- people undergoing a...

The Urban Heat Island (UHI) provides direct evidence of how human activities contribute to a feedback loop that can result in multiple changes in ecosystem services by creating localized warming as well as differences in vegetated landscapes in areas surrounding the urban core. This paper...

Urban ecologists have extended the bounds of this field to incorporate both the effects of human activities on ecological processes (e.g., humans as generators of disturbances), and the ways in which the structures, functions, and processes of urban ecosystems, and human alterations to them, in...

The use of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) is not a new type of contract but they have become more in vogue because of the potential for sequestering carbon by paying to prevent deforestation and degradation of forest lands. We provide a framework utilizing transaction costs to...