We analyse how age and cognitive skills are related to risk tolerance among respondents to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth between 1993 and 2006. Older individuals display lower risk tolerance than younger individuals, though as the panel ages from their early thirties to their...

We examine the effects of involuntary job loss and retirement on the mental health of older Americans using the Health and Retirement Surveys (1992-2002). Potential endogeneity may arise due to reverse causality or latent individual effects or both. Using several econometric techniques we obtain...

We estimate willingness to pay (WTP) to operate under two types of contracts - tournaments (Ts) and fixed performance-standard contracts (F). Our results are consistent with the notion that subjects having social preferences for fairness and care about risk. That is, when subjects experience...

Using experimental economics, we compare the efficiency and welfare effects of tournaments and fixed performance contracts. Our subjects (agents) were generally better off under fixed performance contracts, but the advantage of the fixed performance contract disappears if the relative magnitude...

We use a stated preference instrument to elicit producer preferences for the attributes of risk-shifting hog marketing contracts and express acceptable producer trade-offs between contract attributes in a convenient dollar metric. Respondents value an increase in a window contract's price...

We posit a spatially explicit, county-level model of the hog production sector and estimate how numerous firm-specific, locality-specific, and spatial agglomeration factors affect the location, movement, and intensity of hog production within 15 key hog production states. Spatial agglomeration,...