We apply a model of preferences for information to the domain of decision making under risk and ambiguity. An uncertain prospect exposes an individual to an information gap. Gambling makes the missing information more important, attracting more attention to the information gap. To the extent...

The recent expansion of health-plan choice has been touted as increasing competition and enabling people to choose plans that fit their needs. This study provides new evidence challenging these proposed benefits of expanded health-insurance choice. We examine health-insurance decisions of...

This paper draws attention to a powerful human motive that has not yet been incorporated into economics: the desire to make sense of our immediate experience, our life, and our world. We propose that evolution has produced a ‘drive for sense-making' which motivates people to gather, attend to,...

We consider the determinants and consequences of a source of utility that has received limited attention from economists: people's desire for the beliefs of other people to align with their own. We relate this ‘preference for belief consonance' to a variety of other constructs that have been...

Disclosing personal successes and failures provides others with information not only about one’s outcomes, but also about one’s social preferences. We propose that this information, and the emotional reactions it conveys, influence a recipient’s decision to respond to the disclosure of...

The disposition effect is the reluctance to sell assets at a loss relative to a salient point of reference. Typically, that referent has been assumed to be the purchase price, but other values can also assume prominence as reference points. Drawing on a model of multiple reference points, we...

When drawing inferences about a person’s personal characteristics from their actions, “correspondence bias” is the tendency to overestimate the influence of those characteristics and underestimate the influence of situational factors, such as incentives the individual faces. We build a...

The published paper is available at 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=2675567' http://ssrn.com/abstract=2675567.Defaults have been shown in prior research to impact important decisions, including how people complete advance directives (which specify the medical treatments they want to receive if they...