In this paper, we provide an explanation for why risk taking is related to optimism. Using a laboratory experiment, we show that the degree of optimism predicts whether people tend to focus on the positive or negative outcomes of risky decisions. While optimists tend to focus on the good...

We extend the literature structurally estimating social preferences by accounting for the desire to adhere to social norms. Our representative agent is strongly motivated by norms and failing to account for this causes us to overestimate how much agents care about helping those who are worse...

Arguably, for many citizens the perceived expected disutility from sanctions is smaller than the monetary gain from tax evasion. Nevertheless most people pay their taxes most of the time. In a lab experiment, we show that the willingness to pay taxes even absent enforcement is indeed pronounced....

We extend the literature structurally estimating social preferences by accounting for the desire to adhere to social norms. Our representative agent is strongly motivated by norms and failing to account for this causes us to overestimate how much agents care about helping those who are worse...

We use the trust and the dictator games to explore the effects of religious identity on trust, trustworthiness, prosociality, and conditional reciprocity within a beliefs-based model. We provide a novel and rigorous theoretical model to derive the relevant predictions, which are then tested in...

We consider the psychological and social foundations of human contributions and punishments in a voluntary contributions mechanism with punishment (VCMP). We eliminate 'dynamic economic linkages' between the two stages of our "modified" VCMP to rule out other potential explanations. We use a...

Having an accurate account of preferences help governments design better policies for their citizens, organizations develop more efficient incentive schemes for their employees and adjust their product to better suit their clients' needs. The plethora of elicitation methods most commonly used...

Having an accurate account of preferences help governments design better policies for their citizens, organizations develop more efficient incentive schemes for their employees and adjust their product to better suit their clients' needs. The plethora of elicitation methods most commonly used...

Despite prevailing research asserting the efficiency and stability of punishment over rewards in an environment of perfect information, the prevalence of reward structures in everyday life remains apparent. This commonality might be explained by the enhanced cooperative behavior and welfare...

I examine how reference-dependent states (such as gains and losses) affect investors’ learning from financial information. In a dynamic learning environment, I show that trading in the loss domain not only affects behavior but also biases expectations: Conditional on receiving the same...