An important open problem is how values are compared to make simple choices. A natural hypothesis is that the brain carries out the computations associated with the value comparisons in a manner consistent with the Drift Diffusion Model (DDM), since this model has been able to account for a...

This paper proposes a choice-theoretic framework for evaluating economic welfare with the following features. (1) It is applicable irrespective of the positive model used to describe behavior. (2) It subsumes standard welfare economics both as a special case (when standard choice axioms are...

type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>We conduct a study in which subjects trade stocks in an experimental market while we measure their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging. All of the subjects trade in a suboptimal way. We use the neural data to test a “realization utility”...</p>

The disposition effect refers to the empirical fact that investors have a higher propensity to sell risky assets with capital gains compared to risky assets with capital losses, and it has been associated with low trading performance. We use a stock trading laboratory experiment to investigate...

This paper studies the ability of nonmarket institutions to invest optimally in forward intergenerational goods (FIGs), such as education and the environment, when agents are selfish or exhibit paternalistic altruism. We show that backward intergenerational goods (BIGs), such as social security,...

A central task in microeconomics is to predict choices in as-yet-unobserved situations (e.g., after some policy intervention). Standard approaches can prove problematic when sufficiently similar changes have not been observed or do not have observable exogenous causes. We explore an alternative...

This paper studies how to protect future generations from expropriation and to induce optimal investment in intergenerational public goods (IPGs), by introducing constitutional restrictions on the tax base. The type of tax-base restrictions that we consider places limits on the tax instruments...