Experimental and behavioral economics are well established branches in the economic science. This essay presents and discusses some results and behavioral regularities from these fields which are of potential importance for public policy. After a brief introduction of what experimental and...

In this paper, we survey the theoretical and empirical literature to investigate why nominal wages can be downwardly rigid. Looking back from the 19th century until recently, we first examine the existence and extent of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) for several countries. We find that...

Reform of the federal income tax system has become a perennial item on the domestic policy agenda of the United States, although there is considerable uncertainty over specifics. Indeed the recent report of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform recommended not one but two...

Keynes's theory of probability has been studied intensively in the past few years with much discussion of its relevance to modern economics. This paper examines Keynes's ideas in light of criticisms made by other authors and comes to the conclusion that Keynes's views on rationality are...

Behavioral economics provides a rich set of explicit models of non-classical preferences and belief formation which can be used to estimate structural models of decision making. At the same time, experimental approaches allow the researcher to exogenously vary components of the decision making...

This paper presents experimental evidence about how individuals learn from information that comes from inside versus outside their ethnic group. In the experiment, Thai subjects observed information that came from Americans and other Thais that they could use to help them answer a series of...