Showing 1 - 10 of 42
Economic data engineering deliberately designs novel forms of data to solve fundamental identification problems associated with economic models of choice. I outline three diverse applications: to the economics of information; to life-cycle employment, earnings, and spending; and to public policy...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012660056
We present a model of the labor market with asymmetric information in which the equilibrium of the' market generates unemployment and job queues so that wages may serve as an effective screening device. This happens because more productive workers -- within any group of individuals with a given...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012474599
Pensions influence retirement decisions. The analysis provides a framework for assessing the phenomenon. The qualitative features of most defined benefit pension plans in the United States, as the first section demonstrates, can be used to induce optimal retirement choices. Pensions are viewed...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012477810
Jobs increasingly require good decision-making. Workers are valued not only for how much they can do, but also for their ability to decide what to do. In this paper we develop a theory and measurement paradigm for assessing individual variation in the ability to make good decisions about...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014372431
How significant are individual differences in self-control? Do these differences impact wealth accumulation? From where do they derive? Our survey-based measure of self-control provides insights into all three questions: 1.There are individual differences in self-control not only of a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012468179
We present evidence that many households have only a vague notion of what they are spending on various consumption items. We then develop a life-cycle model that captures this absent-mindedness'. The model generates precautionary spending, whereby absent-minded agents tend to consume more than...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012468478
Costs of attention, while central to choice behavior, have proven hard to measure. We introduce a simple method of recovering them from choice data. Our recovery method rests on the observation that costs of attention play precisely the same role in consumer choice as do a competitive firm's...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012480875
How worker productivity evolves with tenure and experience is central to economics, shaping, for example, life-cycle earnings and the losses from involuntary job separation. Yet, worker-level productivity is hard to identify from observational data. This paper introduces direct measurement of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013361996
Individuals face significant late-in-life risks, prominently including the need for long-term care (LTC). Yet, they hold little long-term care insurance (LTCI). In this paper we use a structural model and a purpose-designed dataset to understand the determinants of insurance demand. We...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012455954
Popularity is self reinforcing. The attention garnered by popular options propels further interest in them. Yet rather than blindly follow the crowd, most pay attention to how well these items match their tastes. We model this role of social learning in guiding selective attention and market...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012457666