We pursue an inverse approach to utility theory and consumption & investment problems. Instead of specifying an agent’s utility function and deriving her actions, we assume we observe her actions (i.e. her consumption and investment strategies) and ask if it is possible to derive a utility function for which the observed behaviour is optimal. We work in continuous time both in a deterministic a...

G. Gergely, H. Bekkering, and I. Király (2002) showed that 14-month-old infants imitate rationally, copying an adult's unusual action more often when it was freely chosen than when it was forced by some constraint. This suggests that infants understand others' intentions as rational choices of action plans. It is important to test whether apes also understand others' intentions in this way. In ...

This paper analyzes the effect of market concentration and product differentiation on the observed outcomes of competition among oligopolists. The empirical framework is designed to examine whether competition is less intense in markets with equal levels of concentration, but more differentiation among the products offered. A two-stage estimation procedure is proposed to address the endogeneity...

Experimental decision-making research often uses a task in which participants are presented with alternatives from which they must choose. Although tasks of this type may be useful in determining measures (e.g., preference) related to explicitly stated alternatives, they neglect an important aspect of many real-world decision-making environments—namely, the option-generation process. The goal o...

The formulation of hybrid discrete choice models, including both tangible alternative attributes and latent variables associated with attitudes and perceptions has been a major topic of discussion in recent years. To estimate models with both kinds of variables, two methods have been developed: the sequential approach, where the latent variables are built before their integration with the tradi...

BACKGROUND Prior studies have described the career paths of physician-scientist candidates after graduation, but the factors that influence career choices at the candidate stage remain unclear. Additionally, previous work has focused on MD/PhDs, despite many physician-scientists being MDs. This study sought to identify career sector intentions, important factors in career selection, and experie...

The redesign of business processes has become the key challenge for many healthcare organizations. This paper argues that current main research streams fail to assist healthcare practitioners in facing this challenge. More specifically, the main research streams fail to support practitioners in developing process alternatives that drastically outperform the performance of current processes in t...

The tourism industry is known to have an extensive use of the Internet, both on the supply and on the demand side. The steady and fast emergence of the Internet has dramatically changed the business processes within the sector, forcing suppliers and intermediaries to adapt to a scenario in which visitors have multiple and more flexible choices regarding the search, planning, booking, and purcha...

This paper examines the equilibrium relationship between politics and the economy. I consider a repeated-election model with policy and office motivated politicians. The incumbent politician chooses a tax rate and oversees the activities of the private and public sectors. Politicians differ in their ability to increase the productivity of the private sector, and in their ability to transform ta...

Unconscious neural activity has been repeatedly shown to precede and potentially even influence subsequent free decisions. However, to date, such findings have been mostly restricted to simple motor choices, and despite considerable debate, there is no evidence that the outcome of more complex free decisions can be predicted from prior brain signals. Here, we show that the outcome of a free dec...