We provide a revealed preference analysis of the rational addiction model. The revealed preference approach avoids the need to impose an, a priori unverifiable, functional form on the underlying utility function. Our results extend the previously established revealed preference characterizations...

The seafood industry represents a significant market for the U.S. and New England in particular. Given the commodity nature of this market, one would believe that it should follow widely accepted economic market theory. Contrary to this belief, this study found that the seafood auctions in the...

In this paper we investigate the size of the consumption drop at retirement in Italy. We use micro data on food and total non-durable household spending covering the period 1993-2004, and evaluate the change in consumption that accompanies retirement by exploiting the exogenous variability in...

We test whether laboratory measures of individual preferences for risk and guilt relate to risk-connected behaviors in a pandemic, such as socializing, dining in at restaurants, and hand washing. We also investigate how guilt and risk aversion relate to the impact of governmental...

This study uses the 2009 Financial Capability Study dataset to examine the association between individuals' financial literacy and their costly borrowing decisions. The results indicate that financial literacy is indeed negatively associated with costly borrowing behaviors. Other factors such as...

This article examines how dynamic changes in information cost structure and time preferences affect consumers' search and switching behavior over time and lead to lock-in. The information cost structure is conceptualized as a tradeoff of initial setup costs and ongoing usage costs. Lock-in is...

Common intuition and experimental psychology suggest that the ability to self-regulate ("willpower") is a depletable resource. We investigate the behavior of an agent with limited willpower who optimally consumes over time an endowment of a tempting and storable consumption good or "cake". We...

We present a survey design that generalizes static conjoint experiments to elicit inter-temporal adoption decisions for durable goods. We show that consumers' utility and discount functions in a dynamic discrete choice model are jointly identified using data generated by this specific design. In...

In this research we examine the motivational influence of regulatory focus on revealed time preference. Drawing on regulatory focus research, we hypothesize an interaction effect between regulatory focus and valence such that, compared with prevention focus, promotion focus is associated with...

The recent financial crisis has led to calls for a better understanding of the reasons behind the increase in mortgage defaults and the foreclosures that followed. Previous studies using option-based mortgage default models predicted that borrowers should immediately exercise the default option...