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...

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...

Neuroeconomics uses knowledge about brain mechanisms to inform economic theory. It opens up the "black box" of the brain, much as organizational economics opened up the theory of the firm. Neuroscientists use many tools - including brain imaging, behavior of patients with brain damage, animal...

We review recent developments in neuroeconomics and their implications for economics. The paper consists of six sections. Following the Introduction, the second section enumerates the different research methods that neuroscientists use evaluates their strengths and limitations for analyzing...

Since the advent of the discounted utility (DU) model economists have thought about intertemporal choice in very specific terms. DU assumes that people make explicit tradeoffs between costs and benefits occurring at different points in time. While this explicit tradeoff perspective is simple and...

We analyze the offering, asking, and granting of help or other benefits as a three-stage game with bilateral private information between a person in need of help and a potential help-giver. Asking entails the risk of rejection, which can be painful: since unawareness of the need can no longer be...

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...

The disposition effect is the reluctance to sell assets at a loss relative to a salient point of reference, typically assumed to be the purchase price. Using data on stocks and housing sales, we show that the peak price achieved by an asset during the investor's period of holding constitutes an...

Attention is a pivotal resource in the modern economy and plays an increasingly prominent role in economic analysis. We summarize research on attention from both psychology and economics, placing a particular emphasis on its capacity to explain numerous documented violations of classical...