This paper investigates how loss-aversion affects individuals' decisions on savings and insurance purchase. Specifically, this paper empirically tests if prospect theory's loss aversion decreases insurance demand and increases savings demand. Prospect theory predicts that boundedly rational...

Analysis of an original, broad, internet-based survey reveals that debt holding is related to three aspects of time discounting: (i) present bias, measured by the degree of declining impatience in the generalized hyperbolic discount function; (ii) borrowing aversion, captured by a sign effect -...

Time preferences can affect divorce probability both affecting the quality of the match and affecting the spouses' reactions to negative shocks. We analyze the relationship between time preferences and divorce decisions using data from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth, which...

People’s value for their own time is a key input in evaluating public policies: evaluations should account for time taken away from work or leisure as a result of policy. Using rich choice data collected from farming households in western Kenya, we show that households exhibit non-transitive...

An individual’s decision about how much to save depends on her perception of how current savings affects future well-being. Fatalistic individuals believe that they have little or no control over future outcomes. We develop a theoretical model linking fatalism to savings and test the...

The new Medicare Part D program provides prescription drug coverage for older Americans through highly subsidized and tightly regulated plans offered by private insurance firms. For most eligible individuals without coverage from other sources, obtaining Part D coverage would be rational, but it...

Decisions are often postponed even when future profits are not expected to compensate for the losses. This is especially relevant for financial and entrepreneurial disinvestment choices, as investors often have a disposition to hold on to losing assets for too long. We use an experiment with...

In Anscombe and Aumann’s (1963) domain, there are two types of mixtures. One is an ex-ante mixture, or a lottery on acts. The other is an ex-post mixture, or a state-wise mixture of acts. These two mixtures have been assumed to be indifferent under the Reversal of Order axiom. However, we...

A common premise in both the theoretical and policy literatures on development is that people remain poor because they are too impatient to save and too risk averse to take the sort of chances needed to accumulate wealth. The empirical literature, however, suggests that this assumption is far...