There is a large literature evaluating the dual process model of cognition, including the biases and heuristic it implies. To advance this literature, we focus on what triggers decision makers to switch from the intuitive process (aka System 1) to the more deliberative process (aka System 2)....

Using newly digitized unemployment insurance claims data we construct a historical monthly unemployment series for U.S. states going back to January 1947. The constructed series are highly correlated with the Bureau of Labor Statics' state-level unemployment data, which are only available from...

Since 2010 and before the pandemic hit, the share of households refusing to participate in the Current Population Survey (CPS) tripled. We show that partially-responding households - households that respond to some but not all of the survey's eight panels - account for most of the rise....

One of the dangers of high inflation is that it can cause firms and households to pay close attention to it. This internalization of inflation can lead to an accelerationist regime, making inflation harder to control. We empirically assess the relationship between attention and the level of...

Prior research has documented that attention to inflation shifts when inflation surpasses a 3-4% threshold. In this note we examine how attention to inflation declines in episodes of disinflation. We show that for countries where inflation has returned to "normal" (pre-threshold) levels,...

Because costly punishment is not credible, subgame perfection suggests that punishment will not deter free riding, regardless of the size or structure of groups. However, experiments show that people will punish free riders, even at considerable cost. To examine the implications of agents who...

There is now an extensive literature on "gift exchange" showing that when principals and agents can trade "gifts" (rewards that should not emerge in a competitive equilibrium), exchange becomes more efficient. However, it is not obvious how gift exchange should be organized if the principal's...

In many environments, tournaments can elicit more effort from workers, except perhaps when workers can sabotage each other. Because it is hard to separate effort, ability and output in many real workplace settings, the empirical evidence on the incentive effect of tournaments is thin. There is...