The cornerstone of mainstream economic theory is the premise of rationality. Humans are assumed to be rational economic agents who, subject to the available information and limited resources, are able to select, among a set of alternatives, the best means to maximize their ends and their...

This paper extends behavioral economics' realist methodological critique of rational choice theory to include the type of logical reasoning underlying its axiomatic foundations. A purely realist critique ignores Kahneman's emphasis on how the theory's axiomatic foundations make it normative. I...

I examine some neoclassical, behavioral, and heuristic models of individual decision-making, and argue that the diverse psychological mechanisms these models posit are cognitively too demanding to be implemented, consciously or unconsciously, by actual decision makers. Accordingly, these models...

In this paper we investigate the influence of financial incentives on agents’ commitment success who use a self-bet mechanism to overcome their self-control problems. We use results from the theoretical model developed in Hirt-Schierbaum and Ivets (2020) that allows for heuristic bias in...

Evidence from hypothetical scenarios strongly suggests the existence of a sunk cost bias, the tendency to ‘throw good money after bad money.’ However, the few studies using incentives are inconclusive. In addition, evidence on potential psychological channels underlying such a bias is...

We study a model of task completion with the opportunity to learn about own self-control problems over time. While the agent is initially uncertain about her future self-control, in each period she can choose to learn about it by paying a non-negative learning cost and spending one period. If...

Traditionally, economic models have attributed procrastination to present bias. However, procrastination may also arise when individuals derive anticipatory utility from holding motivated, overly optimistic beliefs about the workload they need to complete. This study provides a rigorous...

Procrastination is often attributed to time-inconsistent preferences but may also arise when individuals derive anticipatory utility from holding optimistic beliefs about their future effort costs. This study provides a rigorous empirical test for this notion of ‘motivated procrastination’....

This paper argues that there are two rival meanings of the concept of ecological rationality, which are often believed to be closely related if not similar. The first type is ecological rationality (ER1) as used in the work of Gerd Gigerenzer, which refers to the use of cognitive strategies,...

Building on an overview of various kinds of dual systems/process theories in psychology and economics, the paper proceeds with a methodological assessment in terms of the mechanistic or constitutive explanations framework that has gained prominence in philosophy of science recently, especially...