This paper analyzes a boundedly rational decision maker who is uncertain about his preference and faces the following trade-off: adding a good to the choice set has a positive option value but increases the complexity of the choice problem. The increased complexity is modeled as a reduction of...

Individuals frequently face intertemporal decisions. For the purposes of economic analysis, the preference parameters assumed to govern these decisions are generally considered to be stable economic primitives. However, evidence on the stability of time preferences is notably lacking. In a large...

How can economic theory explain the reasons why consumers adopt innovations? Using the example of innovations in washing machines two approaches are compared. The first focuses in the manner of household production theory on changes in constraints without specifying preferences, leading to the...

In a simple conceptual framework, we organize a multitude of phenomena related to the (mis)prediction of utility. Consequences in terms of distorted choices and lower wellbeing emerge if people have to trade-off between alternatives that are characterized by attributes satisfying extrinsic...

In a simple conceptual framework, we organize a multitude of phenomena related to the (mis)prediction of utility. Consequences in terms of distorted choices and lower wellbeing emerge if people have to trade-off between alternatives that are characterized by attributes satisfying extrinsic...

Contrary to claims by Gul and Pesendorfer (2008), I show that standard economics makes use of non-choice evidence in a meaningful way. This is because standard economics solely grounded in the theory of choice is "incomplete". That is, it has content that can not be revealed with any general...

For many goods and services, such as cellular-phone service and debit-card transactions, the price of the next unit of service depends on past usage. As a result, consumers who are inattentive to their past usage but are aware of contract terms may remain uncertain about the price of the next...

Psychologists report that people make choices on the basis of "decision utilities'' that routinely overestimate the "experienced utility'' consequences of these choices. This paper argues that this dichotomy between decision and experienced utilities may be the solution to an evolutionary design...

This paper develops a theory of focusing and framing in an intertemporal context with risky choices. We provide a selection criterion between existing theories of fo- cusing by allowing a decision maker to choose her frame such that her attention is either drawn to salient events associated with...