This paper evaluates Nordhaus’s neoclassical complaints about the Stern Review from the vantage point of classical growth theory. Nordhaus argues that the Stern Review exaggerates the effects of global warming because it uses a discount rate that is well below the market rate of return on...

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...

We consider an extension of the classical secretary problem where a decision maker observes only the relative ranks of a sequence of up to N applicants, whose true values are i.i.d. U[0,1] random variables. Applicants arrive according to a homogeneous Poisson Process, and the decision maker...

Although theories in both evolutionary biology and economics predict that an individual’s health should be associated with the individual’s time preference, no prior study has been done to empirically support or refute such predictions. By collecting detailed measures of health, time...

This dissertation, which consists of three essays, studies online auctions boththeoretically and empirically.The first essay studies a special online auction format used by eBay, “Buy-It-Now” (BIN) auctions, in which bidders are allowed to buy the item at a fixed BINprice set by the seller...

Previous work in experimental economics reveals specific differences in economic behavior, especially reciprocity and free-riding behavior, across cultures. We expand the possible pallet of cross-cultural behavioral differences that may exist. We hypothesize that different kinds of strategic...

This thesis contains four essays which are all from the broader field of insurance economics. The chapters can be read independently, although there is a certain connection between the articles. Chapter 2, which deals with moral hazard, and chapter 3, which is on oligopolistic models in the...