Control of carbon dioxide emissions in developing countries is becoming a key issue in the international climate policy. A critical element for achieving substantial emission reduction in those countries is the installment of new energy technologies. Drawing on the framework of poverty-trap...

There is a growing interest in cross-border medical care and its comparative advantages. In addition, medical care can be defined as a local assurance good. Little research is being carried out in this field. This paper discusses the individual considerations for medical treatment offered at...

This paper analyses the role of information in the search process. Ibuild a simple model of a good with two random attributes with somejoint probability distribution. I consider seemingly unimportant changesin this distribution, i.e. changes which neither affect expected utility norits variance....

A theory of decision making is proposed that offers an axiomatic basis for the notion of satisficing postulated by Herbert Simon. The theory relaxes the standard assumption that the decision maker always fully perceives his preferences among the available alternatives, requiring instead that his...

The paper suggests a similarity function for applications of empirical similarity theory in which the notion of similarity is asymmetric. I propose defining similarity in terms of a quasimetric. I suggest a particular quasimetric and explore the properties of the empirical similarity model given...

Asset demand tests for Expected Utility have almost universally been implemented in contingent claim settings where markets are complete. However when markets are incomplete, these tests cannot be applied since contingent claim prices cannot be uniquely recovered from given asset prices and the...

Diversification is a fundamental concept in economics, decision theory, and finance, but the way in which it is implemented in the real world varies greatly. This paper asks how elementary the notion of diversification is by studying whether children apply it as a choice heuristic. We report on...

Diversification is a fundamental concept in economics, decision theory and finance. It also lies at the core of the Darwinian evolution argument, and diversifying behavior known as bet-hedging has been widely documented in other species. The central premise of this paper is that attitudes...

For a host of compelling methodological reasons, homo oeconomicus has to be replaced. This is consensus, the open question is how this could be accomplished. What is required first is the separation of the formal foundations into a structural and a behavioral part. This paper introduces the...

We identify a new mechanism through which cultural diversity affects economic outcomes, based on a model of culture as shared cognition. Under this view, cultural diversity matters because it increases strategic uncertainty. The model can help better understand a variety of disparate evidence,...