This paper explores the microeconomics and dynamics of food and nutrition. It examines the linkages between malnutrition and the incentive to invest and accumulate capital. The analysis focuses on a dynamic model where preferences about the future depend on nutrition and health. Situations of...

We analyze survey evidence on individuals' willingness to sanction law violations – such as evading taxes, drunk driving and fare dodging – by disapproval or social exclusion. Our data show that people condition their willingness to sanction a norm violation on their belief about its...

This study investigates the effects of social comparisons accompanying a substantial reform of the Dutch pension system on the job satisfaction of workers who are close to retirement. The reform implies that public sector workers born on January 1, 1950, or later face a substantial reduction in...

Effectiveness of real-time electricity prices depends upon consumers being willing to subscribe to them and being able to curb their consumption levels. The present paper addresses both issues by considering consumers differentiated by their saving costs in the stylized real-time pricing model...

This study examines the sustainable practices adopted by private individuals. Ten households observation, twenty-two face to-face interviews and three hundreds questionnaires highlight a number of daily practices combining sustainability-oriented and individualistic motivations. Three spheres of...

Parents care about their children, spend resources on educating them and bequeath them some physical and/or human capital. Here we argue that the actions of the parents have an influence, not only on the productive possiblities open to the children (through the captital they inherit) but also on...

Latent class, or finite mixture, modelling has proved a very popular, and relatively easy, way of introducing much-needed heterogeneity into empirical models right across the social sciences. The technique involves (probabilistically) splitting the population into a finite number of (relatively...

We show that quasi-hyperbolic discounting not only affects savings decisions but also the demand for insurance. In general, insurance demand by quasi-hyperbolic discounters is time-inconsistent. Without liquidity constraints they buy more insurance than initially planned. In the presence of...

We explore the determinants of financial satisfaction using a modelling framework which allows the drivers of financial satisfaction to vary across life stages. Given that financial satisfaction is measured as an ordered variable, our modelling approach is based on a latent class ordered probit...

Anecdotal, empirical, and experimental evidence suggests that offering extrinsic rewards for certain activities can reduce people's willingness to engage in those activities voluntarily. We propose a simple rationale for this 'crowding out' phenomenon, using standard economic arguments. The...