There are N projects of unknown quality. We solve the problem of choosing the best n<N projects from this set when there is a finite time to allocate to learning their quality.

Subjects who overestimate their performance in experimental tasks unrelated to travel are less willing to insure against failing in the task and also less inclined to buy travel insurance. This suggests intrinsic optimism influences insurance demand and diminishes adverse selection.

The single decision maker chooses one of the actions repeatedly. She chooses the action with the highest weighted average of the past payoffs. In the long run either the action with highest expected payoff or the action with highest minimal payoff is chosen depending on how weights evolve.

We endogenize the trading mechanism selection in a model of directed search with risk averse buyers and show that the unique symmetric equilibrium entails all sellers using fixed price trading. Mechanisms that prescribe the sale price as a function of the realized demand (auctions, bargaining,...

This paper examines the effect of default options on choice behavior in experience-based decisions. To this end, we designed the “radio-button” experimental paradigm, in which participants are asked to set default options that remain effective until they decide to change them, and the...

In this paper we consider maximum likelihood estimation in some exact and inexact linear rational expectation (LRE) models. The implications of the two models on the coefficients of the vector autoregressive (VAR) model are spelled out. The inexact version is more complicated and possible...

Members of a shareholder meeting or legislative committee have greater or smaller voting power than meets the eye if the nucleolus of the induced majority game differs from the voting weight distribution. We establish a new sufficient condition for the weight and power distributions to be equal,...

We develop and characterize analytically an investment model in discrete time with a fixed adjustment cost not proportional to existing capital and complete irreversibility that reproduces the lumpiness of investment at the micro-level. In agreement with the empirical evidence, as a firm size...

This paper extends a discrete-choice model of differentiated product demand to consider consumer heterogeneity in dynamic games. Our approach applies to games involving both multi-product firms and static price competition.

Hyperbolic discounting with naiveté is widely believed to provide a better explanation than exponential discounting of why people borrow so much and why they wait so long to save for retirement. We reach a different set of conclusions. We show that if financial planning is enriched to include...