Escalation is a key characteristic of many consumption behaviors that has not received the theoretical attention it deserves. The aim of this paper is to propose both a definition and a theoretical treatment of escalation in consumption. We shall define escalation as the attempt to obtain...

This paper explores how a relational contract establishes a norm of reciprocity and how such a norm shapes the provision of informal incentives. Developing a model of a long-term employment relationship, I show that generous upfront wages that activate the norm of reciprocity are more important...

Inter-temporal decisions involves assigning values to various payoffs occurring at different temporal distances. Past research has used different approaches to study these decisions made by humans and animals. For instance, considering that people discount future payoffs at a constant rate...

We develop a dynamic model of monopolistic competition which sheds light on how the interplay between the degree of product differentiation and intertemporal elasticity of substitution affects the steady-state equilibrium. Consumers love variety and split their labor endowment between wage...

How does the generosity of social insurance coverage affect demand for healthcare and health outcomes of elderly people? This paper examines the effects of insurance coverage on long-term care (LTC) utilization and its health consequences using novel administrative data of the public long-term...

We propose and develop a dynamic theory of endogenous preference formation in which people adopt worldviews that shape their judgments about their experiences. The framework highlights the role of mindset flexibility, a trait that determines the relative weights the decision maker places on her...

Basic economic analysis of litigation funding shows that risk neutral plaintiffs without budget constraints will not accept funding unless they are pessimistic relative to the funder. Risk aversion makes a plaintiff who shares probabilistic beliefs with the funder act observationally equivalent...

A growing literature shows how insights from behavioral economics can be successfully adopted in simple interventions through SMS or other types of low-cost communications. In this short, note we provide concrete basic guidelines to design behaviorally informed messages, based on theory and our...

9-ending prices, which comprise between 40%–95% of retail prices, are popular because shoppers perceive them as being low. We study whether this belief is justified using scanner price-data with over 98-million observations from a large US grocery-chain. We find that 9-ending prices are higher...

Using longitudinal data from PSID, we show the positive relation between labor income and the equity share of financial wealth is stronger for those who have a higher persistence in shocks to permanent labor income. The results support the hypothesis that the cross sectional variation in...