"Waste not want not" expresses our culture's aversion to waste. "I could have gotten the same thing for less" is a sentiment that can diminish pleasure in a transaction. We study people's willingness to "pay" to avoid this spoiler. In one scenario, participants imagined they were looking for a...

'Waste not want not' expresses our culture's aversion to waste. 'I could have gotten the same thing for less' is a sentiment that can diminish pleasure in a transaction. We study people's willingness to 'pay' to avoid this spoiler. In one scenario, participants imagined they were looking for a...

We examine the information content of a newly created news sentiment index from over 300,000 articles from some of the most widely read newspapers in the US to explain changes in the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment from 1995 to 2009. Using ARMA-models, we show that consumer...

Using a representative survey of the German population, this paper studies individual consumption responses to a recent payroll tax reduction. Our results show that 55% of the respondents spend the extra money, indicating considerable potential for tax changes to affect consumption and economic...

Many real life choices concern consumption in future periods. Previous studies apparently demonstrate that people systematically mispredict future tastes in such situations. This evidence, however, is also consistent with the idea that people understand, but do not approve of their future...

Using a representative survey of the German population, this paper studies self-reported individual consumption responses to a recent payroll tax reduction. About 55 percent of the respondents report that they spend the extra money, indicating considerable potential for tax changes to affect...