Projection bias is the tendency to overpredict the degree to which one's future tastes will resemble one's current tastes. We test for evidence of projection bias in two of the largest and most important consumer markets - the car and housing markets. Using data for more than forty million...

Walmart often faces strong local opposition when trying to build a new store. Opponents often claim that Walmart lowers nearby housing prices. In this study we use over one million housing transactions located near 159 Walmarts that opened between 2000 and 2006 to test if the opening of a...

When buying durable goods, consumers must forecast how much utility they will derive from future consumption, including consumption in different states of the world. This can be complicated for consumers because making intertemporal evaluations may expose them to a variety of psychological...

Using a unique, national data set that indicates where students choose to send their SAT scores, the authors find that college sports success has a large impact on student application decisions. For example, a school that has a stellar year in basketball or football on average receives up to 10%...

Does a dramatic drop in crime lead to an increase in property values? To date, the literature on how crime influences property values has focused solely within a single metropolitan area and has been limited primarily to cross-sectional analysis. In this study we exploit the dramatic, nationwide...

Empirical studies have produced mixed results on the relationship between a school’s sports success and the quantity and quality of students that apply to the school. This study uses two unique data sets to shed additional light on the indirect benefits that sports success provides to NCAA...

This paper investigates the impact of lower mortgage rates on household balance sheets and other economic outcomes during the housing crisis. We use proprietary loan-level panel data matched to consumer credit records using borrowers' Social Security numbers, which allows for accurate...

An integrated tax and transfer system together with factor mobility can help mitigate local shocks within monetary and fiscal unions. In this paper we explore the role of a new mechanism that may also be central to determining the welfare effects of regional shocks. The degree to which...

Can raising awareness of racial bias subsequently reduce that bias? We address this question by exploiting the widespread media attention highlighting racial bias among professional basketball referees that occurred in May 2007 following the release of an academic study. Using new data, we...

In many education and work environments, economic agents must perform several mental tasks in a short period of time. As with physical fatigue, it is likely that cognitive fatigue can occur and affect performance if a series of mental tasks are scheduled close together. In this paper, we...