This paper builds a consumer search model where the cost of going back to stores already searched is explicitly taken into account. We show that the optimal search rule under costly recall is very different from the optimal search rule under perfect recall. Under costly recall, the optimal...

We investigate whether US households possess advance information about their future income and what this means for consumption insurance. Based on insights from a theoretical model, we propose a new test to detect advance information, which requires only panel data on consumption and income....

Many empirical studies on intertemporal choice report preference reversals in the sensethat a preference between a small reward to be received soon and a larger reward to bereceived later reverses as both rewards are equally delayed. Such preference reversals arecommonly interpreted as...

Many important decisions are made without precise information about the probabilities of the outcomes. In such situations, individual ambiguity attitudes influence decision making. The present study identifies affective states as a transient cause of ambiguity attitudes. We conducted two...

Economists have become increasingly interested in using attention to explain behavioral patterns both on the micro and macro level. This has resulted in several disparate theoretical approaches. Some, like rational inattention, assume a "top-down" model of executive optimization. Others, like...

Prospective economic developments depend on the behavior of consumer spending. A key question is whether private expenditures recover once social distancing restrictions are lifted or whether the COVID-19 crisis has a sustained impact on consumer confidence, preferences, and, hence, spending....

Does attention have a causal impact on risky decisions? We address this question in a preregistered experiment in which participants accept or reject a series of mixed gambles while exogenously varying how information can be sampled. Specifically, in each trial participants observe the outcomes...