In this online replication study we investigate if the pain of paying in cash – as opposed to paying by cards – can curb impulsive urges to purchase unhealthy or ‘vice' products. This effect was found by Thomas et al (2011) when comparing the payment instruments cash and credit card. We...

From 1998 to 2009 I find that the average time between U.S. households' grocery shopping trips has steadily increased from 4.7 to 6.2 days, and from 1998 to 2006 per capita monthly consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables has decreased from 130 to 112 oz. To understand these changes, a dynamic...

A body of research has suggested that adolescents experience harm to their psychological well-being, including self-esteem, because of excessive time spent using digital media, such as social media. The mechanism through which screen time influences self-esteem is often explained as the result...

Expenditure visibility—the extent to which a household's spending on a consumption category is noticeable to others—is measured in three new surveys, with ~3,000 telephone and online respondents. Visibility shows little change across time (ten years) and survey methods. Four different...

Language has a strong influence on our perceptions of time and rewards. This raises the question of whether large language models, when asked in different languages, show different preferences for rewards over time and if their choices are similar to those of humans. In this study, we analyze...

Online social networks, such as Facebook, disclose an unprecedented volume of personal information amplifying the occasions for social comparisons, which can be a cause of frustration. We test the hypothesis that the use of social networking sites (SNS) increases social comparisons as proxied by...

Many individuals have empathetic feelings towards animals but frequently consume meat. We investigate this "meat paradox" using insights from the literature on motivated reasoning in moral dilemmata. We develop a model where individuals form self-serving beliefs about the suffering of animals...

The concept of "luxury beliefs" has gained increasing attention in recent months. It captures the idea that, as status goods become more affordable, ideology has emerged as a new way to signal status. I use a signaling game to derive a prediction related to the concept: given some beliefs are...

Does political conflict with a foreign country influence domestic consumers' daily consumption choices? This study exploits the volatile US-China relations in 2018 and 2019 to analyze whether US consumers reduce their visits to Chinese restaurants when bilateral relations deteriorate. We measure...