Do individuals have unbiased beliefs, or are they over- or underconfident? Overconfident individuals may fail to prepare optimally for the future, and economists who infer preferences from behavior under the assumption of unbiased beliefs will make mistaken inferences. This paper documents...

Measuring sexual orientation, behavior, and related opinions is difficult because responses are biased towards socially acceptable answers. We test whether measurements are biased even when responses are private and anonymous and use our results to identify sexuality-related norms and how they...

The endowment effect is among the best known findings in behavioral economics, and has been used as evidence for theories of reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion. However, a recent literature has questioned the robustness of the effect in the laboratory, as well as its relevance in...

Foresightful workers can take actions to reduce their exposure to risk in labor markets, but existing evidence on narrow bracketing suggests that individuals might not optimally integrate risk reduction decisions with subsequent labor decisions. In an online labor market, we vary the level of...

Economics research has largely overlooked non-binary individuals. We aim to jump-start the literature by providing data on several economically-important beliefs and preferences. Among many results, non-binary individuals report more gender-based discrimination and express different career and...

Fragmented healthcare received from many different physicians results in higher costs and lower quality, but does it contribute to dangerous opioid prescribing? The effect is theoretically ambiguous because fragmentation can trigger costly coordination failures but also permits greater...

Administrative barriers to social insurance program take-up are pervasive, including in subsidized health insurance. We conducted a randomized controlled trial with Massachusetts' Affordable Care Act marketplace to reduce these barriers and other behavioral frictions. We find that a "check the...

Shareholders want a firm's objective function to place some weight on consumer welfare, motivated by both self-interested and altruistic motivations. Firms have a unique technology for improving consumer welfare: lowering inefficient price markups, which increases consumer welfare more than it...