This paper provides an introduction to the field of evolutionary economics with emphasis on the evolutionary theory of household behavior. It shows that the goal of evolutionary economics is to improve upon neoclassical economics by incorporating more realistic and empirically grounded...

In this paper I discuss overweight and obesity and their repercussions on health deficit accumulation and longevity in a life cycle model. Individual decisions are conceptualized as the partial control of impulsive desires of a short-run self (the limbic system) by a rationally forward-looking...

The paper explores how repeated revisions of consumption plans increase long-run utility. If agents value present anticipations of future consumption, some revisions may be viewed as a benign form of self-delusion. We consider a minimal generalization of the Samuelson discounted utility model to...

In this paper I unify the economic theories of addiction and health deficit accumulation and develop a life cycle theory in which individuals take into account the fact that the consumption of addictive goods reduces their health and longevity. I distinguish two types of addiction: perfect and...

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of exogenous social security system parameters on welfare. The set up is an overlapping generations economy, with skills heterogeneity, which distinguishes consumers between high and low skilled. The lowskilled receive an extra supplement...

Die Debatte um Nudging wird durch die große Bandbreite dessen, was als „Nudge“ betrachtet wird, erschwert. Die Einschränkung des Begriffs auf Maßnahmen, die Rationalitätsdefizite des Individuums ausnutzen, hat sich in der Debatte nicht durchgesetzt. Da die so definierten Nudges zudem als...

In fifteen European countries, China, and the US, stocks and business equity as a share of total household assets are represented by an increasing and convex function of income/wealth. A parsimonious model fitted to the data shows why background labor-income risk can explain much of this...

The vast majority of household wealth in the U.S. is held in illiquid assets, primarily housing, making households vulnerable to unexpected income shocks. To rationalize this preference for illiquidity, we build a life-cycle model where households are tempted to consume their liquid wealth but...

We document the large dispersion in hours worked in the cross-section. We account for this fact using a model in which households combine market inputs and time to produce a set of nonmarket activities. To estimate the model, we create a novel data set that pairs market expenditures and time use...

We study the cyclical dynamics of consumption in the euro area (EA) and the large EA countries by distinguishing durable from nondurable expenditures. We adopt a theoretical partial equilibrium framework to justify the identification strategy of our empirical model, a time-varying parameter...