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Explaining individual behavior in politics should rely on the same motivational assumptions as explaining behavior in the market: That’s what Political Economy, understood as the application of economics to the study of political processes, is all about. In its standard variant, those who...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010412852
This paper contrasts the modern use of the assumption that rationality guides individual economic behaviour, as … notions of rationality based on the availability of information, ability to reason (cognitive skills), and even morality …. Learning played a major role in individuals achieving what was referred to as complete rationality. I draw on these ideas, and …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10002756346
We designed four observational learning experiments to identify the key channels that, along with Bayes-rational inferences, drive herd behavior. In Experiment 1, unobserved, whose actions remain private, learn from the public actions made in turn by subjects endowed with private signals of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011789104
Most economic models are based on the self-interest hypothesis that assumes that all people are exclusively motivated by their material self-interest. In recent years experimental economists have gathered overwhelming evidence that systematically refutes the self-interest hypothesis and suggests...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011397676
How do voters allocate costly attention to alternative political issues? And how does selective ignorance of voters interact with policy design by politicians? We address these questions by developing a model of electoral competition with rationally inattentive voters. Rational inattention...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011451105
This paper presents novel evidence for the prevalence of deviations from rational behavior in human decision making – and for the corresponding causes and consequences. The analysis is based on move-by-move data from chess tournaments and an identification strategy that compares behavior of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012226615
In the seminal rational inattention model of Matĕjka and McKay (2015), logit demand arises from the discrete choice of agents who are uncertain about choice payoffs and have access to a flexible, costly information acquisition technology (RI-logit). A notable limitation of this powerful...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014247316
We investigate whether violations of canonical axioms of choice under risk are mistakes or a manifestation of true preferences. First, we elicit axiom and gamble preferences and then allow subjects to revise their potentially conflicting preferences. Among the behavioral patterns that allow for...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014556632
The main insight of this paper is that moral behavior does not necessarily alleviate coordination problems or may even worsen them, if individuals possess different degrees of morality. We characterize heterogenous Alger-Weibull morality preferences in a canonical model of voluntary...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014632345
This paper examines whether policymakers, economists at the Israeli Finance Ministry, act in their personal pension decisions in accordance with the rational behaviour assumptions underlying the pension policies they advance. We find that while economists' decisions regarding three other...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003883889