This paper develops a theory in which heterogeneity in political preferences produces a partisan disagreement about objective facts. A political decision involving both idiosyncratic preferences and scientific knowledge is considered. Voters form motivated beliefs in order to improve their...

People frequently behave non-selfishly in situations where they can reduce their own payoff to help others. It is typically assumed that such pro-social behavior arises because people are motivated by a social preference. An alternative explanation is that they follow a social norm. We test with...

This paper examines the decision making process of an entrepreneur in innovative marketing, and makes clear that emotions are critical factors in decision making at the entrepreneurial top management level. Over the past few decades, a considerable number of researches have been made on...

In four studies, we show that consumers' savings can be increased or decreased merely by changing the way consumers think about their saving goals. Consumers can (a) either specify or not specify an exact amount to save (goal specificity), and (b) they can focus on either how to save, or why to...

An agent makes consumption choices in multiple periods. Choice objects vary in type and quality; objects of the same type are inter-temporal substitutes. The current choice set is informative about the distribution over future choice sets. Thus, the presence of unchosen alternatives may...

Studies on the social behavior and cooperation decisions of individuals within and between different ethnic or cultural groups have gained increasing importance in economic sciences, especially in the field of behavioral economics. Axelrod and Hammond (2006) developed an agent-based simulation...

In this paper, we survey the theoretical and empirical literature to investigate why nominal wages can be downwardly rigid. Looking back from the 19th century until recently, we first examine the existence and extent of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) for several countries. We find that...

Minority-protection laws often differ over time and across societies. We show how the dynamic interaction between strong and weak social groups may account for these differences and their evolution. We assume that interaction occurs in a democratic environment, where representative institutions...

I discuss a fundamental and pervasive aspect of social networks that has a signfii cant impact on behavior: "homophily. "Homophily refers to the tendency of individuals to associate with others who have similar characteristics as themselves. This tendency has been observed across a variety of...