We show that people manipulate their valuations of ambiguous risks when doing so allows them to justify unfair behavior. In a binary dictator decision, dictators chose between a “fair” and an “unfair” choice. By choosing the unfair choice, dictators increase their own allocation,...

Recent research has demonstrated that choices between gambles are systematically influenced by the way they are expressed. Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory (1979) explains many of these "framing" effects as shifts in the point of reference from which prospects are evaluated. This paper...

Neuroeconomics uses knowledge about brain mechanisms to inform economic analysis, and roots economics in biology. It opens up the "black box" of the brain, much as organizational economics adds detail to the theory of the firm. Neuroscientists use many tools— including brain imaging, behavior...

This article examines how public concern about different social problems changes over time in response to fluctuations in problem severity. Examining time series of concern and objective severity for nine different problems, both graphically and econometrically, we address three main questions....

Recent research has documented an 'endowment effect' whereby people become more attached to objects they receive than would be predicted from their prior desire to possess the object. In two experiments, the authors test whether people are aware of the effect--whether they realize that they will...