Is the way that people make risky choices, or tradeoffs over time, related to cognitive ability? This paper investigates whether there is a link between cognitive ability, risk aversion, and impatience, using a representative sample of the population and incentive compatible measures. We conduct...

Is the way that people make risky choices, or tradeoffs over time, related to cognitive ability? This paper investigates whether there is a link between cognitive ability, risk aversion, and impatience, using a representative sample of the population and incentive compatible measures. We conduct...

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...

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...

We analyse the consumption strategy of a dynamically inconsistent individual for goods that provide an immediate benefit and a delayed cost. The agent has incomplete information on the cost inherent to each unit of consumption and partially learns this value anytime he consumes. We show that, by...

There are few studies on occupational choices in Germany, and second-generation occupational choice and mobility is even less investigated. Such research is important because occupations determine success in the labour market. In a country like Germany occupations also reflect a general...

We analyze the impact of micro-founded political institutions on economic growth in an overlapping-generations economy, where individuals differ in preferences over a public good (as well as in age). Labour and capital taxes finance the public good and a public input. The benchmark institution...

This Paper analyses the optimal timing of taxes on capital income. We show that the celebrated result that taxes should front-loaded with an initially high tax followed by a discrete jump to the steady state is knife-edge, hinging on capital having a constant depreciation rate. An empirically...

We review the role of R&D in endogenous growth theory, and describe extant empirical research – macro and micro – bearing on R&D as an engine of growth. Taking R&D to be key, while recognizing the significance of economic incentives, emphasizes knowledge as an economic object and, more...