We examine the behavior of members of an industry-wide pension fund to assess both the prevalence of defaults and their impact on retirement savings. Our empirical investigations show that preferences, demographic characteristics and labor mobility matter greatly when it comes to the low active...

For decisions in the wild, time is of the essence. Available decision time is often cut short through natural or artificial constraints, or is impinged upon by the opportunity cost of time. Experimental economists have only recently begun to conduct experiments with time constraints and to...

Heuristics are all around us, both in the real world and the literature. There are many of them and there are many — too many — definitions of them. In this chapter we focus on the history of fast and frugal heuristics, as sketched out comprehensively in Gigerenzer, Todd, & the ABC Research...

We try to better understand the comparative advantages of structural and behavioral remedies of deregulation in electricity markets, an eminent policy issue for which the experimental evidence is scant and problematic. Specifically, we investigate theoretically and experimentally the effects on...

We consider a two-layered review system of environmental regulation where a polluting firm periodically self-reports its emissions to a regulatory authority. The system typically requires a third party to verify the firm's report and, in addition, an official of the regulatory authority to...

We discuss ways to cope with uneven expected lab earnings that are the likely results of role assignments. We identify three problems associated with uneven earnings in the lab: of social preferences, of low marginal return for effort, and of perceived deception. Mining the opinions of...

The Allais Paradox, or Common Consequence Effect to be precise, is one of the most well-known behavioral regularities in individual decision making under risk. A common perception in the literature, which motivated the development of numerous generalized non‐expected utility theories, is that...

Retirement saving is an area now jam-packed with defaults meant to address delayed or absent decision making. Yet, getting individuals engaged with retirement saving decisions is critical to avoid unsuitable one-size-fits-all defaults and optimise accumulated wealth. We apply a...

Self-regulatory organizations (SROs) can be found in education, healthcare, and other not-for-profit sectors as well as in the accounting, financial, and legal professions. DeMarzo et al. (2005) show theoretically that SROs can create monopoly market power for their affiliated agents, but that...

I investigate the conjecture (proposed by his namesake Vernon L. Smith) that Adam Smith was afflicted by Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism. I summarize the evidence confirming this conjecture. Concluding that on balance there is considerable evidence supporting Smith’s...