The endowment effect is among the best known findings in behavioral economics, and has been used as evidence for theories of reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion. However, a recent literature has questioned the robustness of the effect in the laboratory, as well as its relevance in...

Behavioral economics attempts to integrate insights from psychology, neuroscience, and sociology in order to better predict individual outcomes and develop more effective policy. While the field has been successfully applied to many areas, education has, so far, received less attention - a...

This paper evaluates the prospects for the emerging field of neuroeconomics to shed light on traditional positive and normative economic questions. It argues that the potential for meaningful contributions, though often misunderstood and frequently overstated, is nevertheless present.

We use two different approaches to measure intertemporal preferences. First we employ the classical method of inferring preferences from a series of choices (subjects choose between $X now or $Y in D days). Second we adopt the novel approach of inferring preferences using only response time data...

A model is proposed in which stochastic choice results from noise in cognitive processing rather than random variation in preferences. The mental process used to make a choice is nonetheless optimal, subject to a constraint on available information-processing capacity that is partially motivated...

Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky...

Agency problems in economics virtually always entail self-interested agency exhibiting "insufficient" loyalty to principal. Social psychology also has a literature, mainly derived from work by Stanley Milgram, on issues of agency, but this emphasizes excessive loyalty -- people undergoing a...

This paper studies the pruned state-space system for higher-order approximations to the solutions of DSGE models. For second- and third-order approximations, we derive the statistical properties of this system and provide closed-form expressions for first and second unconditional moments and...

We provide a novel methodology for estimating time-varying weights in linear prediction pools, which we call Dynamic Pools, and use it to investigate the relative forecasting performance of DSGE models with and without financial frictions for output growth and inflation from 1992 to 2011. We...

A fruitful emerging literature reveals that shocks to uncertainty can explain asset returns, business cycles and financial crises. The literature equates uncertainty shocks with changes in the variance of an innovation whose distribution is common knowledge. But how do such shocks arise? This...