It is common in studies of individual choice behavior to report averages of the behavior under consideration. In the social sciences the mean is, indeed, often the quantity of interest, but at times focusing on the mean can be misleading. For example, it is well known in labor economics that...

We propose and analyze a generalization of present value maximization, 'time-order dependent present value (TODPV),' for intertemporal income choice. The model is analagous to the rank dependent expected utility model (RDEU) for choice under risk. The main feature of interest in the model is the...

The empirical observation of preference reversals has been viewed as a fundamental challenge to economic theory, though exactly what the implications for economic theory are has not been investigated in depth. We argue in two ways that the implications for economics are not so serious as has...

We conduct an experiment to (i) measure the structure of preferences over lotteries and (ii) test for stability of the probability transformation functions over different choice sets. The design is based on manipulations of the 'probability triangle' A disaggregated nonparametric analysis in...

This is a paper on the creation and evolution of conventions of behavior in ”inter-generational games”. In these games a sequence of non-overlapping ”generations” of players play a stage game for a finite number of periods and are then replaced by other agents who continue the game in...

In the real world, when people play games, they often receive advice from those that have played it before them. Such advice can facilitate the creation of a convention of behavior. This paper studies the impact of advice on the behavior subjects who engage in a non-overlapping generational...

We study experimentally "partnership protocols" of the sort proposed by Kalai and Kalai (2010), for bilateral trade games with incomplete information. We utilize the familiar game analyzed by Chatterjee and Samuelson (1983) and Myerson and Sattherwaite (1983), with a buyer and seller with value...

The paper studies the role of information transparency on fairness concerns, welfare and efficiency. When the firm's productivity and ultimately profits are revealed, wage offers induce relatively fair divisions of potential gains and workers respond with higher performance. Workers respond not...

Controversy exists about the act of giving as altruistic instead of self-interested behavior. Each side of this argument interprets similar results from similar experiments in different ways. One side argues the results show that the appearance of altruistic behavior can be explained by...