The exogenous manipulation of choice architectures to achieve social ends ('social nudges') can raise problems of effectiveness and ethicality because it favors group outcomes over individual outcomes. One answer is to give individuals control over their nudge ('self-nudge'), but the trade-offs...

Integrating economic experiments into household surveys provides unique possibilities. We introduce the German Socio-Economic Panel's Innovation Sample (SOEPIS), which offers researchers detailed panel data and the possibility to collect personalized experimental and survey data for free. We...

We investigate whether the presence of a default interacts with the willingness of decision-makers to gather, process and consider information. In an online experiment, where about 2,300 participants choose between two compiled charity donation options worth $ 100, we vary the availability of...

We consider a neoclassical growth model with quasi-hyperbolic discounting under Kantian optimization: each temporal self acts in a way that they would like every future self to act. We introduce the notion of a Kantian policy as an outcome of Kantian optimization in a given class of policies. We...

Dieser kurze Text bietet eine kursorische Einführung in die klassische ökonomische Verhaltenstheorie, die auf der Kunstfigur des homo oeconomicus beruht. Es wird versucht die konzeptionellen Grundlagen des Modells darzulegen, die wesentlichen Intuitionen des Modells zu vermitteln und zentrale...

Dieser kurze Text bietet eine kursorische Einführung in die klassische ökonomische Verhaltenstheorie, die auf der Kunstfigur des homo oeconomicus beruht. Es wird versucht die konzeptionellen Grundlagen des Modells darzulegen, die wesentlichen Intuitionen des Modells zu vermitteln und zentrale...

Overconfidence is one of the most ubiquitous cognitive bias. There is copious evidence of overconfidence being relevant in a diverse set of economic domains. In this paper, we relate the recent concept of cognitive uncertainty with overconfidence. Cognitive uncertainty represents a decision...

The field of behavioral taxation dates back at least to the 1950s. In this contribution I will explore the opportunities and challenges in the area, with a particular focus on tax compliance. I will focus on the data required to make further progress, discussing what can be improved when working...

Using a large survey panel that connects household shopping behavior with individual health information, this paper documents correlations between self reported depression and the size and composition of shopping baskets. First, we find that roughly 16% of individuals report suffering from...

Individuals' preferences underlying most economic behavior are likely to display substantial heterogeneity. This paper reports on direct measures of preference parameters relating to risk tolerance, time preference, and intertemporal substitution. These experimental measures are based on survey...

In a framework of sequential search, we define a decision maker’s time preference, which is endogenous to her optimal decisions and the environment. The induced time preference is non-stationary and context-dependent, which supports key empirical and experimental evidence, such as...

We conduct an experiment using sequential dictator games where two dictators give serially to a common recipient. In the treatment conditions, the second dictator knows the outcome in the first game and thus the endowment of the recipient. Across treatment conditions, we alter the mechanism that...

This paper will go into detail on a stock market simulation done by 352 different individuals. There was a cash prize for the participant who finished with the highest earned amount at the end of the simulation and each participant was asked a series of questions after they completed the...

Abstract: Frank Knight was an enigmatic thinker: not only about economics, but also about individual and social behavior more generally, ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, and a number of other subjects. However, his views on some topics often created tensions with his views on other...

After a discussion of cigarette smoking in the context of the Becker-Murphy (1988) model of rational addictive behavior, demand equations are derived accounting for the tolerance, reinforcement, and withdrawal characteristic of addictive consumption. These are contrasted to equations developed...

In many health domains, we are concerned that observed links - for example, between “healthy” behaviors and good outcomes - are driven by selection into behavior. This paper considers the additional factor that these selection patterns may vary over time. When a particular health behavior...

In a world where everyone wants our attention, reminders and notifications are omnipresent. It is evident that reminders work. They steer our attention towards a particular decision, and in many cases, they can be a powerful tool for motivation and behavior change. However, reminders also have a...

Field experiments have shown that information nudging can help households to save energy, however, the effectiveness varies depending on aspects such as information content, delivery mode and study area. This article evaluates the impacts of information nudges on residential electricity...

Behavioral economics provides insights into how people process information and make decisions. It also helps to explain why and how people tend to make decisions that are not in their best interest, as opposed to what rational choice theory would suggest. This chapter provides an introduction to...

Polydrug abuse is common among substance abusers, but few empirical or theoretical methods accurately characterize this phenomenon. This chapter describes a simulation paradigm that was developed to apply a behavioral economic analysis to understanding polydrug abuse. Heroin abusers 'purchased'...

Achievement gaps may reflect the cognitive impairment thought to occur in evaluative settings (e.g., classrooms) where a stereotyped identity is salient (i.e., stereotype threat). This study presents an economic model of stereotype threat that reconciles prior evidence on how student effort and...

Rizzo and Whitman’s Escaping Paternalism (2019) is, at once, a scholarly treatise on the nature of rationality and a powerful critique of the use of behavioral insights to support a new paternalism in public policy. Since its recent publication, it has informed research, among other things,...

We propose a broadly applicable empirical approach to classify individuals as time consistent versus naive or sophisticated regarding their self-control limitations. Operationalizing our approach based on nationally representative data reveals that self-control problems are pervasive and that...

The research aims to examine the effect of the irrational behaviour of individual investors on stock investment decisions, specifically, anchoring, disposition effect, home bias, herding, overconfidence and risk perception. The research further investigates the moderating role of gender between...

Although many economists, most notably Strotz, have discussed dynamic inconsistency and precommitment, none have dealt directly with the essence of the problem: self-control. This paper attempts to fill that gap by modeling man as an organization. The Strotz model is recast to include the...

Many of the behavioral insights in economics arise out of experiments or examples in which the conventional claims of economics, and rational choice quite generally, are contradicted by observed results. The conventional view – that people and firms maximize utility and profit, and often do so...

This paper has two goals. First, we discuss several emerging approaches to applied welfare analysis under non-standard ("behavioral") assumptions concerning consumer choice. This provides a foundation for Behavioral Public Economics. Second, we illustrate applications of these approaches by...

We review the recent literature on rational inattention, identify the main theoretical mechanisms, and explain how it helps us understand a variety of phenomena across fields of economics. The theory of rational inattention assumes that agents cannot process all available information, but they...

We propose a broadly applicable empirical approach to classify individuals as time-consistent versus naïve or sophisticated regarding their self-control limitations. Operationalizing our approach based on nationally representative data reveals that self-control problems are pervasive and that...

This paper examines the role of economic factors in determining retirement behavior using a unique new data archive on more than 8,700 workers covered by ten different pension plans. We build on our earlier work by estimating several different retirement models including linear as well as...