We study a model that relates dividend payout policy to behavioral issues based on the ideas of mental accounting. A panel analysis across 29 countries and over 43,000 firm-years demonstrates that our model studying the relation between dividends and patience, loss aversion, and ambiguity...

We use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a longitudinal study of a representative sample of the US population, to examine social rank effects on the relationship between life satisfaction and economic status. We examine the effects of income, home values, mortgage debts, financial...

This paper deals with tax policy responses to charitable giving based on a model of optimal redistributive income taxation. The major contribution is the simultaneous treatment of (i) warm-glow and stigma effects of charitable donations; (ii) that the warm glow of giving and stigma of receiving...

World life expectancy has risen by around 20 years in the last 50 years. This period has also witnessed rising happiness levels around the world suggesting that happiness might be one of the causes behind the decline in mortality. We investigate the relationship between happiness and mortality...

There has been considerable research into dynamic global tactical asset allocation (GTAA) strategies driven by simple measures of Valuation and Momentum applied to a baseline balanced portfolio of equities and fixed income (see Blitz and van Vliet 2008, Wang and Kochard 2011, Gnedenko and Yelnik...

While the role of cultural norms in determining corruption is well-explored in the empirical literature, the relationship between a specific aspect of culture, that is, individualism versus collectivism, and corruption is rather unexplored. This paper investigates the relationship between...

Hypothetical stock market investment experiment in six countries reveals that after controlling for the average profit in the whole stock market subjects prefer losing money rather than gaining money as long as their so-called "friends" lose more money. The sad result is that only 8.2% of the...

We explore the relation between social political identity and prosociality. We first construct a theoretical model to generate predictions for the behavior of players in an ultimatum game who are influenced by social political identity. Then we use a novel subject pool-registered members of...

We develop a behavioral model of durable good usage with mental accounting for sunk costs. It predicts higher-than-rational usage that attenuates at a rate that increases with sunk costs. Singapore government policy varied the sunk cost of buying a new car. Using Singapore data, we estimate the...

This research explores the economic causes and consequences of language structures. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that variations in pre-industrial geographical characteristics that were conducive to higher returns to agricultural investment, gender gaps in agricultural...