Nonparametric techniques are usually seen as a statistic device for data description and exploration, and not as a tool for estimating models with a richer economic structure, which are often required for policy analysis. This paper presents an example where nonparametric flexibility can be...

Self-administered rewards are ubiquitous. They serve as incentives for personal accomplishments and are widely recommended as tools for overcoming self-control problems. However, it seems puzzling why self-rewards can work: the prospect of a reward has a motivating force only if the threat of...

A growing literature in economics uses subjective well-being data collected in surveys as a proxy for utility. Environmental economists have combined these data with the public goods experienced by respondents using a novel non-market valuation approach: the experienced preference approach. In...

Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) often present concise choice scenarios that may appear incomplete to respondents. To allow respondents to express uncertainty arising from this incompleteness, DCEs may ask them to state probabilities with which they expect to make specific choices. The...

Econometric analyses in the happiness literature typically use subjective well-being (SWB) data to compare the mean of observed or latent happiness across samples. Recent critiques show that com-paring the mean of ordinal data is only valid under strong assumptions that are usually rejected by...

Parsimony is a desirable feature of economic models but almost all human behaviors are characterized by vast individual variation that appears to defy parsimony. How much parsimony do we need to give up to capture the fundamental aspects of a population's distributional preferences and to...

An important advance in the study of reference-dependent preferences is the discipline provided by coherent accounts of reference point formation. Kőszegi and Rabin (2006) provide such discipline by positing a reference point grounded in rational expectations. We examine the predictions of...

A criminal record can severely damage labor market prospects. While public and private organizations have developed a host of policies to encourage employers to hire people with a record, research suggests some of the policies may have negative unintended consequences. To explore ways to...

Can a short survey instrument reliably measure a range of fundamental economic preferences across diverse settings? We focus on survey questions that systematically predict behavior in incentivized experimental tasks among German university students (Becker et al. 2016) and were implemented...

Using a Discrete Choice Experiment we estimate the relative value attached by workers on core job attributes identified by previous qualitative research on the Aged Care workforce in Australia: salary (hourly); work hours; training/skill development; staffing numbers; processes for managing...