It is not unusual in real-life that one has to choose among finitely many alternatives when the merits of each alternative are not perfectly known. A natural rule is then to choose the alternative which “looks” best. We show that a version of the monotone likelihood ratio property is sufficient, and also essentially necessary, for this decision rule to be optimal. We also analyze how the precis...

This paper quantifies the degree of competition and spatial differentiation across different retail channels by exploiting a unique dataset that describes a consumer’s choice of store, product of purchase, item price, and demographics. For each household, I collect information on the location and distance of nearby stores. Then I estimate a consumer’s choice of retailer in the sales market for ...

We present a stochastic process algebra including immediate actions, deadlock and termination, and explicit stochastic delays, in the setting of weak choice between immediate actions and passage of time. The operational semantics is a spent time semantics, avoiding explicit clocks. We discuss the embedding of weak-choice real-time process theories and analyze the behavior of parallel compositio...

This paper investigates the relationship between economic regulation and …rms’response to the incentives created by an emissions trading program. The NOx State Implementation Plan (SIP) Call Rule was designed to facilitate cost e¤ective reductions of nitrogen oxides emissions from large stationary sources (primarily electricity generators) in 19 eastern states. I estimate a discrete choice mode...

Ella Clay Wakeman Calhoun has the distinction of being the only woman in the class of 1921, the second class to admit women, at the Yale School of Medicine. Her decision to enter medical school was an unusual career choice for a woman in the early part of this century. Of the few women who graduated from college, most chose fields where there were already women as mentors and colleagues: as lib...

In decisions from experience (DFE), people sample from two or more lotteries prior to making a consequential choice. Although existing models can account for how sampled experiences relate to choice, they don’t explain decisions about how to search (in particular, when to stop sampling information). We propose that both choice and search behavior in this context can be understood as a sequentia...

Most theories explaining how animals form preferences for their actions agree upon a basic outline: animals discover what is preferable through interactions with the world, store this information in memory, and recall it to help them decide what to do in a new situation. However, no single theory currently explains both how preferences are learned, and how they are recalled in a way that is com...

In a perfect world, the choice of any course of action would lead to a satisfactory outcome, and we would obtain feedback about both our chosen course and those we have chosen to forgo. In reality, however, we often face harsh environments in which we can only minimize losses, and we receive impoverished feedback. In these studies, we examined how decision makers dealt with these challenges in ...

Birnbaum (2011) criticized tests of transitivity that are based entirely on binary choice proportions. When assumptions of independence and stationarity (iid) of choice responses are violated, choice proportions could lead to wrong conclusions. Birnbaum (2012a) proposed two statistics (correlation and variance of preference reversals) to test iid, using random permutations to simulate p-values....

This paper presents a model of consumer boycotts where the discrete choices of concerned consumers are represented as a stochastic processes. We solve for the limiting distribution of the process and analyze its properties. We then discuss how the model relates to game-theoretic models of collective action and derive an equilibrium selection result. The type of equilibrium selected depends on t...