We show that if agents are risk neutral, prizes outperform wages if and only if there is sufficient pride and envy relative to the noisiness of performance. If agents are risk averse, prizes are a necessary supplement to wages (as bonuses)

In vertical markets, eliminating double marginalization with a two-part tariff may not be possible due to downstream firms' risk aversion. When demand is uncertain, contracts with large fixed fees expose the downstream rm to more risk than contracts that are more reliant on variable fees. In...

According to retrospective voting a bad economy hurts the incumbent party and vice versa. According to risk-aversion voting a bad economy favors the Democrats over the Republicans and vice versa. This paper provides a test of both theories and rejects risk-aversion voting

We axiomatize, in an Anscombe-Aumann framework, the class of preferences that admit a representation of the form V(f) = mu - rho(d), where mu is the mean utility of the act f with respect to a given probability, d is the vector of state-by-state utility deviations from the mean, and rho(d) is a...

The equilibrium prices in asset markets, as stated by Keynes (1930): "...will be fixed at the point at which the sales of the bears and the purchases of the bulls are balanced." We propose a descriptive theory of finance explicating Keynes' claim that the prices of assets today equilibrate the...

We offer new sufficient conditions ensuring demand is downward sloping local to equilibrium. It follows that equilibrium is unique and stable in the sense that rising supply implies falling prices. In our setting, there are two goods, which we interpret as consumption in different time periods,...

Ambiguous assets are characterized as assets where objective and subjective probabilities of tomorrow's asset-returns are ill-defined or may not exist, e.g., bitcoin, volatility indices or any IPO. Investors may choose to diversify their portfolios of fiat money, stocks and bonds by investing...

The equilibrium prices in asset markets, as stated by Keynes (1930), "...will be fixed at the point at which the sales of the bears and the purchases of the bulls are balanced." We propose a descriptive theory of finance explicating Keynes' claim that the prices of assets today equilibrate the...

We propose a class of multiple-prior representations of preferences under ambiguity, where the belief the decision-maker (DM) uses to evaluate an uncertain prospect is the outcome of a game played by two conflicting forces, Pessimism and Optimism. The model does not restrict the sign of the...

Cognitive dissonance is one of the most influential theories in psychology, and its oldest experiential realization is choice-induced dissonance. In contrast to the economic approach of assuming a person's choices reveal their preferences, psychologists have claimed since 1956 that people alter...