The papers in this volume were presented in May 2000, at a conference held at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. The purpose of the conference was to explore individual motivation and sensemaking in the context of group membership. This volume presents the papers discussed at...

We demonstrate that upward-looking comparisons induce "keeping up with the richer Joneses"-behavior. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we estimate the effect of reference consumption, defined as the consumption level of all households who are perceived to be richer, on household...

We examine subsidies for health care when consumers have present-biased preferences, which lead them to underestimate the effect of today s consumption on future health. We compare immediate subsidies paid for health-conscious consumption and future subsidies rewarding a good health outcome. We...

A frequent feature of information structures is that they generate signals which are not mutually independent, but rather rely on a common set of underlying information. Using a simple experimental design, we show that in such contexts many people neglect correlations in the updating process,...

A constant price level facilitates cooperation among firms whereas steady inflation and deflation rates lower firms' ability to cooperate. In an experimental market with price competition we show that both inflation and deflation signicantly reduce cooperation compared to treatments with a...

This paper analyzes volatility spillovers in multivariate GARCH-type models. We show that the cross-effects between the conditional variances determine the persistence of the transmitted volatility innovations. In particular, the influence of a foreign volatility innovation on a conditional...