In this paper, we examine the importance of two different peer effects as determinants in the adolescent’s decision whether or not to smoke. One is measured at the class level and the other reflects the smoking behaviour of the adolescent’s best friends. A nationally representative wave of...

The article deals with the ambiguous relation between fear and expertise, and examines how it affects institutions’ legitimation. In contemporary societies the so-called expert systems can be considered as powerful trust creators. However their power can also cause fear, as their control over...

To investigate the role of anger and anxiety traits on psychological attitudes about consumer behaviour, we asked to participants their perceptions and preferences about housing loans. Results show that: mortgage risk perception is negatively associated with trait anger and positively with trait...

Terror may have dire implications for the public’s behavior. According to Kirschenbaum (J Homel Secur Emerg Manag 3(1/3):1–33, <CitationRef CitationID="CR41">2006</CitationRef>), in order to minimize the expected impact of a terror incident the public has to adopt a “survival strategy”. According to the underlying research...</citationref>

The study of insight problem solving could well become one of the most important topics in the contemporary debate on thought. Dealing with insight problems today requires of necessity reconsidering the concept of bounded rationality. Simon’s work has inspired us to reflect on the specific...

The ‘bat and ball’ is one of the problems most frequently employed as a testbed for research on the dual-system hypothesis of reasoning. Frederick (J Econ Perspect 19:25–42, <CitationRef CitationID="CR16">2005</CitationRef>) is the first to envisage the possibility that different numerical arrangements of the ‘bat and ball’...</citationref>

Replying to Queen Elizabeth II who in November 2008 asked why so few economists had warned about the emerging financial crisis, a group of eminent economists of the British Academy, claimed that while this failure had many causes, the most important was principally a failure of the collective...

In economics in situations where there is uncertainty one has to attribute some attitude to handling this uncertainty to individuals. The original idea was to assume that “people do not make systematic mistakes” for which Muth coined the term “rational expectations”. This was replaced by...