During the last two decades economists have made much progress in understanding incentives, contracts and organisations. Yet, they constrained their attention to a very narrow and empirically questionable view of human motivation. The purpose of this paper is to show that this narrow view of...

This paper synthesizes recent research in economics and psychology on the measurement and empirical importance of personality skills and preferences. They predict and cause important life outcomes such as wages, health, and longevity. Skills develop over the life cycle and can be enhanced by...

This paper considers the relationship between the economic concept of time preference and relevant concepts from psychology and biology. Using novel data from a time diary study conducted in Ireland that combined detailed psychometric testing with medical testing and real-time bio-tracking, we...

We exploit a natural experiment in which two professionals compete in a one-stage contest without strategic motives and where one contestant has a clear exogenous psychological momentum advantage over the other in order to estimate the causal effect of psychological momentum on performance. We...

'There have been some exciting developments in choice modeling, but much of this work is only accessible to those attending conferences like the International Choice Modeling Conference where researchers from many different fields can share their work. This Handbook brings the best of this new...

Microcredit is an innovative financial tool designed to reduce poverty and fix credit market imperfections. We use experimental measures of time discounting and risk aversion for villagers in south India to highlight behavioral features of microcredit. Conditional on borrowing from any source,...

This paper adopts a psycho-economic approach, based on the "Demonstration Effect" hypothesis, to analyze the effects that the presence of children has on the time devoted to elder care. We combine the approach of the Social Cognitive Theory and a three-generation altruism model. Using the 2003...

This timely and comprehensive new Handbook brings together an unrivalled group of distinguished scholars and practitioners to provide in-depth analysis and a contemporary perspective on a wide-ranging array of topics in maritime economics. Inherently global in nature, the economics of the...

This Handbook looks through the lens of the latest generation of scholars at the main propositions believed by so-called "Austrians". Each contributing author addresses key tenets of the school of thought, and outlines its ongoing contribution to economics and to the social sciences