We show that a steeply increasing workload before a deadline is compatible with time-consistent preferences. The key departure from the literature is that we consider a stochastic environment where success of effort is not guaranteed. JEL Classification: D91, J22, D81, D11.

Duesenberry introduced the notion of a ratchet investor who does not tolerate any decline in her consumption rate. We connect the demand behavior of such an agent to the behavior of standard time–additive agents. A ratchet investor demands the running maximum of the optimal plan a conventional time–additive investor with lower initial wealth would choose. JEL subject classification. D91

Utilitarianism plays a central role in economics, but there is gap between theory, where utilitarianism dominant, and applications, monetary criteria are often used. For key difficulty to define how utilities should be measured compared. Drawing on Harsanyi’s (1955) approach, we introduce new normalization of ensuring that: (i) transfer from rich population poor welfare enhancing, (ii) populati...

I conduct a survey experiment to study the relationship between people’s beliefs about size of gender wage gap and their demand for policies aimed at mitigating it. Beliefs causally affect support equal pay legislation affirmative action programs, but cannot account polarization in policy views by partisanship gender. Changes seem be driven changes discrimination labor markets fairness concerns...

We develop an evolutionary approach to explain altruistic preferences. Given their preferences, individuals interact rationally with each other. By comparing the success of players with different preferences, we investigate whether evolution favors altruistic or selfish attitudes. The outcome depends on whether the individuals' interactions are strategic complements or substitutes. Altruism and...

Using a laboratory experiment, we identify whether decision-makers consider it mistake to violate canonical choice axioms. To do this, incentivize subjects report axioms they want their decisions satisfy. Then, make lottery choices which might conflict with axiom preferences. In instances of conflict, give the opportunity re-evaluate decisions. We find that many individuals follow and revise be...

The Big Carrot: High Stake Incentives Revisited This paper provides an empirical demonstration of high stakes incentives in relation to religious practice. It shows that, when both positive (carrot) and negative (stick) incentives are available, the former are more effective than the latter. Specifically, it is shown that beliefs in heaven are much more relevant than beliefs in hell when estima...

ABSTRACT Private organizations that produce public goods often receive offers for funding from large donors who seek to influence the nature of produced. We consider a model in which potential donor creates commitment problem organization sense that, an ex ante perspective, sets price too low given opportunity cost. Our analysis identifies determinants likelihood and assesses various mechanisms...

We provide quasi-experimental estimates of the impact social media on mental health by leveraging a unique natural experiment: staggered introduction Facebook across US colleges. Our analysis couples data student around years Facebook’s expansion with generalized difference-in-differences empirical strategy. find that rollout at college had negative health. It also increased likelihood which st...

Previous work has shown that preferences are not always stable across time, but surprisingly little is known about the reasons for this instability. I examine whether variation in people's emotions over time predicts changes risk attitudes. Using a large-panel dataset, identify happiness, anger, and fear as significant correlates of within-person Robustness checks indicate limited role alternat...