A key open question in economics is the practical, portable modeling of bounded rationality. In this short note, I report on ongoing progress that is more fully developed elsewhere. I present some results from a new model with boundedly rational features in which the decision-maker (DM) builds a...

This paper studies how organizational design affects moral outcomes. Subjects face the decision to either kill mice for money or to save mice. We compare a Baseline treatment where subjects are fully pivotal to a Diffused-Pivotality treatment where subjects simultaneously choose in groups of...

We test the hypothesis that "genuine" or "convincing" smiling is a costly signal that has evolved to induce cooperation in situations requiring mutual trust. Potential trustees in a trust game made video clips for viewing by potential trusters before the latter decided whether to send them...

This paper presents experimental evidence that when individuals are about to make a given decision under risk, they are willing to pay for information on the likelihood that this decision is ex-post optimal, even if this information will not affect their decision. Our findings suggest that this...

This paper proposes a model of boundedly rational choice that explains the well known attraction and compromise effects. Choices in our model are interpreted as a cooperative solution to a bargaining problem among an individual’s conflicting dual selves. We axiomatically characterize a unique...

We present a new theory of wage adjustment, based on worker loss aversion. In line with prospect theory, the workers’ perceived utility losses from wage decreases are weighted more heavily than the perceived utility gains from wage increases of equal magnitude. Wage changes are evaluated...

For the procurement of complex goods the early exchange of information is important to avoid costly renegotiation ex post. We show that this is achieved by bilateral negotiations but not by auctions. Negotiations strictly outperforms auctions if sellers are likely to have superior information...

This article provides a review of recent literature in economics on the effect of mass media on politics. The focus is on the welfare effects of mass media. I also discuss the likely implications of existing behavioral theories of media effects, developed outside of economics.

An uninformed seller offers an object to a privately informed buyer. The buyer projects information and exaggerates the probability that the seller is informed. Letting the buyer bargain and name her own price raises the seller's payoff above the full-commitment payoff. Under seller-offer...

I present a framework for analyzing decision makers with an imperfect understanding of their environment's correlation structure. The decision maker faces an objective multivariate probability distribution (his own action is one of the random variables). He is characterized by a directed acyclic...