Psychology research on contrast effects suggests that the information from a previous decision may be compared to the information provided for the current judgement task. We document a new stylized fact that an analyst’s current earnings forecast of one firm tends to bias against her latest...

Individual contributions to public goods can be framed in absolute or relative metrics. We examine how the framing salience affects the contribution behavior when group members are heterogeneously endowed, based on a reference-dependent theory with salience weights allocated to the absolute or...

In this report, we will continue to study the impact of global health governance on curbing Covid-19 and trace the vaccine development, especially with regard to the Belt and Road Vaccine Partnership launched by China. The second section synthesizes the current progress of the world in...

We present a robust model of speculative bubbles by introducing loss-averse reference-dependent preferences by Koszegi and Rabin (2006) into the framework of Allen, Morris and Postlewaite (1993), where in equilibrium, asymmetrically-informed rational investors buy overvalued assets, hoping to...

The narrowing wage gap between high and low skilled workers in the Chinese labor market in recent years is suggestive of government interventions which may have been implemented in the capital markets. We develop a game theoretic model between a continuum of heterogeneous workers and the...

Facing lengthening lifespans and economic concerns, workers and governments are increasingly considering the possibility of delayed retirement ages. However, the postponement of retirement may not be universally feasible, since not all workers may be willing and able to continue working past the...

Evidence increasingly points to the importance of reference-dependence in predicting consumer behavior. We utilize detailed data from penny auctions, which first appeared as an internet phenomenon in the late 2000's, to uncover how consumers' prior experiences predict their willingness to try a...

How does information asymmetry between firms regarding the quality (ability) of workers, determine the distribution of workers' qualities in those firms? We build a game theoretic model of information asymmetry between 2 representative firms competing in the labor market for labor inputs. In the...

Collective knowledge is significantly affected by information about others’ viewpoints. However, under what conditions does the “wisdom of crowds” help versus harm knowledge of factual information? In this experiment, we present subjects with the task of answering 50 factual true or false...

Although contests are recognized theoretically as a highly effective method of motivation, the competitive nature of contests may generate unintended negative effects on social interactions in more general settings beyond contests. Using a laboratory experiment of real effort tasks with...