Using transaction data from a sample of 1.8 million credit card accounts, we provide the first field test of a major prediction of Prelec and Loewenstein’s (1998) theory of mental accounting. The prediction is that consumers will pay off expenditure on transient forms of consumption more...

We study the allocation of attention to investment accounts among a large sample of individual investors. Investors login to view their accounts on average ten times more frequently than they trade, implying that login behavior is not primarily driven by trading activity. More diversified...

Attention utility is the hedonic pleasure or pain derived purely from paying attention to information. Using data on brokerage account logins by individual investors, we show that individuals devote disproportionate attention to already-known positive information about the performance of...

True and Error Theory (TET) provides a method to separate the variability of behavior into components due to changing true policy and to random error. TET is a testable theory that can serve as a statistical model, allowing one to evaluate substantive theories as nested, special cases. TET is...

Transitivity is the assumption that if a person prefers A to B and B to C, then that person should prefer A to C. This article explores a paradigm in which Birnbaum, Patton and Lott (1999) thought people might be systematically intransitive. Many undergraduates choose C=(96,.85;96,.85;90,. 05;...

We provide the first evidence of causal peer effects in police misconduct using data from about 50,000 officers and staff from London’s Metropolitan Police Service for the period 2011-2014. Previous research is limited to short-term or cross-sectional studies, which prevents inference about...

How do income and income inequality combine to influence subjective well-being? We examined the relation between income and well-being in different societies, and found large effects of income inequality within a society on the relationship between individuals’ incomes and their subjective...

We estimate causal peer effects in police misconduct using data from about 35,000 officers and staff from London’s Metropolitan Police Service for the period 2011–2014. We use instrumental variable techniques and exploit the variation in peer misconduct that results when officers switch peer...