Most upper-management and sales force personnel, as well as workers in many other jobs, are paid based on performance, which is widely perceived as motivating effort and enhancing productivity relative to non-contingent pay schemes. However, psychological research suggests that excessive rewards...

This paper challenges the common assumption that economic agents know their tastes. After reviewing previous research showing that valuation of ordinary products and experiences can be manipulated by non-normative cues, we present three studies showing that in some cases people do not even have...

Recent research has documented an 'endowment effect' whereby people become more attached to objects they receive than would be predicted from their prior desire to possess the object. In two experiments, the authors test whether people are aware of the effect--whether they realize that they will...

Based on contrast effects studies from psychology, we predicted that movers arriving from more expensive cities would rent pricier apartments than those arriving from cheaper cities. We also predicted that as people stayed in their new city they would get used to the new prices and would...

People underappreciate how their own behavior and exogenous factors affect their future utility, and thus exaggerate the degree to which their future preferences resemble their current preferences. We present evidence which demonstrates the prevalence of such projection bias, and develop a...

This paper presents a model of intertemporal choice that incorporates "savoring" and "dread"-i.e., utility from anticipat ion of delayed consumption. The model explains why an individual with positive time preference may delay desirable outcomes or get unpleas ant outcomes over with quickly,...

JEL#: A12, B49, D11, D91, E21<BR> Keywords: Addiction, consumption, cooling off, misprediction, projection bias, reference dependence<BR> People underappreciate how their own behavior and exogenous factors affect their future utility, and thus exaggerate the degree to which their future preferences...

Previous work on the endowment effect has demonstrated that current ownership status affects object valuation and that this effect occurs instantaneously on possession of an object. The current work presents findings from four studies which indicate that the history of past ownership can also...

The most recent wave of decision research goes beyond the usual critiques of linear probability weighting, exponential discounting, and other specialized assumptions, and challenges some of the most basic assumptions of the decision-making paradigm itself. In response to these challenges,...