Behavioral economics has shown that individuals sometimes make decisions that are not in their best interest. This insight has prompted calls for behaviorally-informed policy interventions popularized under the notion of "libertarian paternalism". This type of soft paternalism aims at helping...

This dissertation deals with the motivational foundations of consumer behavior. The dissertation utilizes insights mainly from motivational psychology, biology, and neuroscience to investigate why we are motivated to consume certain goods, but not others. In particular, the dissertation...

Behavioral economics has shown that individuals sometimes make decisions that are not in their best interests. This insight has prompted calls for behaviorally informed policy interventions popularized under the notion of "libertarian paternalism." This type of "soft" paternalism aims at helping...

We design and implement the first real-effort experiment that can jointly estimate present bias (β) and sophistication (bβ), with separate preference parameters for money (βm, bβm) and effort (βe, bβe). In our study, participants chose to (and predicted to) complete 14% (and 10%) fewer...

Recent experimental evidence suggests that donors are averse to giving to charities with high overhead ratios. This paper asks whether donors are also averse to giving to charities spending a high share of the donations on unavoidable administrative expenses. The results of an experiment with a...

The model of time-inconsistent procrastination by O'Donoughe and Rabin shows that individuals who are not aware of their present-bias (nai͏̈ve) procrastinate more than individuals who are aware of it (sophisticated) or are not present-biased (time-consistent). This paper tests this prediction....