We analyze structural state dependence in brand choice using variation from brand switching during stock-outs caused by hurricanes. We derive a simple test for structural state dependence based on the time-series of choice persistence for households affected by the stock-outs. Using data from...

The hypothesis of non-satiation of rational choice theory is very seldom posed under scrutiny, maybe because it is taken as an anthropologic reality. Looking closer to that, we discover that it is taken for granted only in economic theory, and that it has become a reality as a result of a...

Literature in economics and psychology on moral behaviour explores the contexts in which people act in ways that are consistent or inconsistent with their past actions. Such inconsistencies appear to violate economists' assumption of rational consumer behaviour. In this note we show that a...

It has been argued that increased life expectancy raises the rate of return on education, causing a rise in the investment in education followed by an increase in lifetime labor supply. Empirical evidence of these relations is rather weak. Building on a lifecycle model with uncertain longevity,...

This paper analyzes sin goods consumption when individuals exhibit present-focused preferences. It considers three types of present focus: present-bias with varying degrees of naiveté, Gul-Pesendorfer preferences, and a dual-self approach. We investigate the incentives to deviate from healthy...

We show that perceptions of relative rank in the wealth distribution shape individuals' willingness to take risks. Using a representative large-scale survey, we manipulate perceptions of relative standing by randomly varying response categories when asking respondents about their wealth level....

We use nationally representative data from the UK Time-Use Survey 2014/2015 to investigate how a person's employment status is related to time use and cognitive and affective dimensions of subjective well-being. We find that unemployed persons report substantially lower levels of life...

Surveys that measure subjective states like happiness or preferences often generate discrete ordinal data. Ordered response models, which are commonly used to analyze such data, suffer from a fundamental identification problem. Their conclusions depend on unjustified assumptions about the...

We use the UK Time-Use Survey 2014/15 to analyze how differences in the frequency and intensity of social contacts contribute to the gap in experienced well-being between employed and unemployed persons. We observe that people generally enjoy being with others more than being alone. The...

We use an incentivized experimental game to uncover heterogeneity in other-regarding preferences among salespeople in a large Austrian retail chain. Our results show that the majority of agents take the welfare of others into account but a significant fraction reveals self-regarding behavior....