This paper shows that there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between the short-term discount rate over a monetary reward and the short-term discount rate over a primary reward (chocolate). This correlation, however, is absent among subjects who do not like chocolate and...

It is well-known that subjects can exhibit a preference for increasing payments. Smith (2009a) makes a related prediction that the difference between the preference increasing wage payments and the preference for increasing non-wage payments will be largest for intermediate payments. We find...

Prior studies have found that subjects prefer an improving sequence of income over a constant sequence, even if the constant sequence offers a larger present discounted value. However, little is known about how these preferences vary with the size of the wage payments. In each of our three...

This paper presents the functional relationship between two areas of interest in contemporary behavioral economics: one concerning choices under conditions of risk, the other concerning choices in time. The paper first presents the general formula of the relationship between decision utility,...

Numerous experiments have demonstrated the possibility of attitude polarization. For instance, Lord, Ross & Lepper (1979) partitioned subjects into two groups, according to whether or not they believed the death penalty had a deterrent effect, and presented them with a set of studies on the...

While folk theorems for dynamic renewable common pool resource games sustain cooperation as an equilibrium, the possibility of reverting to violence to appropriate the resource destroys the incentives to cooperate, because of the expectation of conflict when resources are sufficiently depleted....