We document heterogeneity in the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) across household characteristics relevant understanding heterogeneous agent models and monetary policy transmission. find a strong negative relationship between liquid wealth MPC. show that predicts MPC closely for every other characteristic we look at. use new empirical method overcomes sources of bias found existing literat...

Analyzing account-level data from an account aggregator, we find that households increase consumption when they receive expected tax refunds, as if face liquidity constraints. However, these same smooth making payments in other years, primarily by transferring funds among liquid accounts. Even carrying credit card debt payments, and even highly spend out of refunds. This behavior is inconsisten...

We conducted 80 auctions on eBay. Forty of these auctions were for various popular music CDs while the remaining 40 auctions were for video games for Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console. The revenue equivalence theorem states that any auction form having the same effective reserve price yields the same expected revenue. The effective reserve price on eBay consists of three components: the opening b...

We study the impact of group-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT ) for individuals selected from general population poor households in rural Ghana (N = 7,227). Results one to three months after program show strong impacts on mental and perceived physical health, socioemotional skills, economic self-perceptions. These effects hold regardless baseline distress. argue that this is because CBT ...

We analyse a multistage game of competition among auctioneers. First, the auctioneers commit to some reserve prices; second, the bidders enter one auction, if any; and finally, the auctions take place. We show that for any finite set of feasible reserve prices, each auctioneer announces a reserve price equal to his production cost if the numbers of auctioneers and bidders are sufficiently large...

Our objective is to determine if a first-price auction or a posted-price market provides a seller with the larger expected revenue when buyers have a common value for the item being sold. An agent-based, posted-price market and an agent-based, first-price common-value auction with a reserve price are developed to compare these selling methods. When the seller cannot impose a reserve price in th...

Bertrand, Kamenica, and Pan (2015) document that in the United States there is a discontinuity to right of 0.5 distribution households according female share total earnings, which they attribute existence gender identity norm. We provide an alternative explanation for this discontinuity. Using linked employer-employee data from Finland, we show emerges as result equalization convergence earning...

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...

We provide a critique of the methods that have been used to derive measures of income risk and draw attention to the importance of demographic factors as a source of income risk. We also propose new measures of the contribution to total income risk of demographic and labour market factors. Empirical evidence supporting our arguments is provided using data from the British Household Survey. JEL ...

This review paper provides an overview of the application of behavioral public economics to energy efficiency. I document policymakers’ arguments for “paternalistic” energy efficiency policies, formalize with a simple model of misoptimizing consumers, review and critique empirical evidence, and suggest future research directions. While empirical results suggest that policies to address imperfec...