Neoclassical economic theory rules out systematic errors in consumption choice. According to the basic view, individuals know what they choose. They are able to predict how much utility an activity or a good produces for them now and in the future and they can maximize their utility. This...

Neoclassical economic theory rules out systematic errors in consumption choice. According to the basic view, individuals know what they choose. They are able to predict how much utility an activity or a good produces for them now and in the future and they can maximize their utility. This...

Individuals frequently face intertemporal decisions. For the purposes of economic analysis, the preference parameters assumed to govern these decisions are generally considered to be stable economic primitives. However, evidence on the stability of time preferences is notably lacking. In a large...

Standard economic analysis assumes that people make choices that maximize their utility. Yet both popular discourse and other fields assume that people sometimes fail to make optimal choices and thus adversely affect their own happiness. Most social sciences thus frequently describe some...

Standard economic analysis assumes that people make choices that maximize their utility. Yet both popular discourse and other fields assume that people sometimes fail to make optimal choices and thus adversely affect their own happiness. Most social sciences thus frequently describe some...

Individuals frequently face intertemporal decisions. For the purposes of economic analysis, the preference parameters assumed to govern these decisions are generally considered to be stable economic primitives. However, evidence on the stability of time preferences is notably lacking. In a large...

In this paper we look at the relationship between health and income as mediated by "lifestyle" choices; that is, a set of behaviours which are thought to influence health and are generally considered to invoke a substantial degree of free choice. The main underlying assumption is that...

We present identification and estimation results for the collective model of labour supply in which there are discrete choices, censoring of hours and nonparticipation in employment. We derive the collective restrictions on labour supply functions and contrast them with restrictions implied by...

We propose a novel structural method to empirically identify economies of scale in household consumption. We assume collective households with consumption technologies that define the public and private nature of expenditures through Barten scales. Our method recovers the technology by solely...

We assess the willingness to pay (WTP) for eyeglasses in an adult population in rural Burkina Faso using a variant of the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) method. We combine the BDM approach with video and deferred payment options to analyze the role of information and liquidity constraints....