Human actions are guided either by endogenous action plans or by external stimuli in the environment. These two types of action control seem to be mediated by neurophysiologically and functionally distinct systems that interfere if an endogenously planned action suddenly has to be performed in response to an exogenous stimulus. In this case, the endogenous representation has to be deactivated f...

This paper builds an enactment theory of commitment to an emerging organizational field, energy efficiency and renewable energy, which is of importance to business and society. Findings from surveys, carried out in a period when this field was constrained by low energy prices and lack of government support, illustrate the theory. The factors driving ongoing commitment during this period were ac...

In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, a cortical region in the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) is recruited when participants read stories about people's thoughts ('Theory of Mind'). Both fMRI and lesion studies suggest that a region near the RTPJ is associated with attentional reorienting in response to an unexpected stimulus. Do Theory of Mind and attentional reorien...

Economic theory suggests that medical spending risk affects the extent to which households are willing to accept financial risk, and consequently their investment portfolios. In this study, we focus on the elderly for whom medical spending represents a substantial risk. We exploit the exogenous reduction in prescription drug spending risk because of the introduction of Medicare Part D in the U....

This paper examines the central hypothesis of the influential Malthusian theory, according to which improvements in the technological environment during the pre-industrial era had generated only temporary gains in income per capita, eventually leading to a larger, but not significantly richer, population. Exploiting exogenous sources of cross-country variations in land productivity and the leve...

We consider the dynamics of reasoning by general rules (theories) and specific cases (analogies). When an agent faces an exogenous process, we show that, under mild conditions, if reality happens to be simple, the agent will converge to adopt a theory and discard analogical thinking. If, however, reality is complex, the agent may rely on analogies more than on theories. By contrast, when the pr...