Which motives drive the decision of a voter to approve or reject a policy proposal? The Public Choice literature distinguishes between instrumental and expressive voting motives. We investigate the importance of these motives by analysing the patterns of neural activity in different voting...

The author argues that it is microeconomics that needs foundations, not macroeconomics. Preferences need to be built on biology, and, in particular, on neuroscience. In contrast, macroeconomics could benefit from rationalizations of aggregate economic phenomena by non-equilibrium statistical...

I argue that it is microeconomics that needs foundations, not macroeconomics. Preferences need to be built on biology, and, in particular, on neuroscience. In contrast, macroeconomics could benefit from rationalizations of aggregate economic phenomena by non-equilibrium statistical physics.

<b>Purpose:</b><br>This paper addresses the nature, formalization, and neural bases of (affective) social ties anddiscusses the relevance of ties for health economics. A social tie is defined as an affectiveweight attached by an individual to the well-being of another individual ('utilityinterdependence')....

The concept of utility is often used in ambiguous ways in economics, from having substantive psychological connotations to being a formal placeholder representing a person's preferences. In the accounts of the early utilitarians, it was a multidimensional measure that has been condensed during...

Individuals in most industrialized countries have to make investment decisions throughout their adult life span to save for their retirement. These decisions substantially affect their living standards in old age. Research on cognitive aging has already demonstrated several changes in cognitive...

In this paper, we elaborate on an idea initially developed by Weitzman (1998) that justifies taking the lowest possible discount rate for far-distant future cash flows. His argument relies on the arbitrary assumption that when the future rate of return of capital (RRC) is uncertain, one should...