People have the natural tendency to be optimistic and believe that good outcomes in the future are more likely, but also want to avoid overestimation that could result in bad decision-making. Brunnermeier, Brunnermeier and Parker (2005) and Brunnermeier et al. (2007) established an optimal...

The overconfidence bias is discussed extensively in economic studies, yet fails to hold experimentally once monetary incentives and feedback are implemented. We consider overconfidence as a social bias. For a simple real effort task, we show that, individually, economic conditions effectively...

We develop a decision framework with imperfect information to analyze the effects of transaction costs on the tendency for individuals to remain with a default option. We demonstrate how transaction costs can be a more important source of such default effects than commonly thought. A further,...

This paper experimentally investigates the nature of impulses in impulse learning. Particularly, we analyze whether positive feedback (i.e., yielding a superior payoff in a game) or negative feedback (i.e., yielding an inferior payoff in a game) leads to a systematic change in the individual...

Enforcement can affect compliance directly and indirectly, through spillovers. We study intertemporal enforcement spillovers by conducting a randomized field experiment in a university exam. The initial phase of the experiment is the exam itself. We induce variation in enforcement by randomly...

We prove a formula for the computation of optimal financial investments in an expected utility framework with arbitrary (not necessarily concave) utility functions. This extends classical results on optimal financial investments for strictly concave utility functions and is of importance...

We present a multi-trial experiment that extends the classic experiment of Thaler et al. (1997) by adding short-term information to long-term investment. The allocation to the risky asset is reduced in the long-term, when we add short-term information.

Since the enactment of Pension Protection Act of 2006, lifecycle funds that reduce exposure to stocks with age have rapidly replaced money market funds as the most commonly nominated default investment options for participant-directed retirement plans. We examine their appropriateness in meeting...

We study financial risk taking via standard and sophisticated financial investments. Using survey data on 2,047 individuals, we find that standard investments are strongly associated with both actual and perceived financial literacy for men, but only with actual literacy for women. Sophisticated...

The 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act limited homestead exemptions and imposed means test to discourage petitioners seeking financial benefits. We find that these restrictions were effective in steering petitioners away from Chapter 7 filings and into Chapter 13.