This article proposes definitions of lying and deception in strategic settings. A critical distinction is that deception requires a model of how the audience responds to messages while lying does not. Lies need not be deceptive. Deception does not require lying. The paper identifies situations in which lying is consistent with equilibrium and when the ability to lie is welfare enhancing. Decept...

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...

We conduct a carefully designed random-assignment experiment to investigate whether negative affect impacts overconfidence. Our result indicates that, compared to neutralaffect, fear and sadness significantly increase overconfidence. All decisions were incentivized, and the result is robust to various specification checks. Further, our result has implications for the role of emotions in economi...

We analyse two types of belief-dependant models of social preferences: guilt aversion and reciprocity. In particular, we test the relevance of their input variables (second-order beliefs and general dispositions for guilt/reciprocity). The data confirm the predictions of belief-dependant models. Both secondorder beliefs and a participant’s sensitivity to guilt/reciprocity are relevant for the d...

The study shows that subjects who set their minimum acceptable offer equal to zero in an ultimatum game (UG) are the most generous dictators in a dictator game. The finding implies that interpreting indiscriminately the acceptance of low UG offers as payoff maximization can be misleading and suggests that altruism and/or the desire to maximize welfare are to a large extent behind. JEL Classific...

We reformulate neoclassical consumer choice by focusing on λ, the marginal utility of money. As the opportunity cost of current expenditure, λ is approximated by the slope of the indirect utility function of the continuation. We argue that λ can largely supplant the role of an arbitrary budget constraint in partial equilibrium analysis. The result is a better grounded, more flexible and more in...

Inelastic nuclear resonant scattering spectra were measured on alloys of Fe3Al that were chemically disordered, partially ordered, and D03 ordered. The features in the phonon partial density of states of 57Fe were found to change systematically with chemical short-range order in the alloy. Changes in the phonon partial density of states were modeled successfully by assigning vibrational spectra...

The Economics of Child Well-Being This chapter presents an integrated economic approach that organizes and interprets the evidence on child development. It also discusses the indicators of child well-being that are used in international comparisons. Recent evidence on child development is summarized, and policies to promote child well-being are discussed. The chapter concludes with some open qu...

The authors use a laboratory experiment to examine the impact of relative wages on labor supply. They test the hypothesis that, ceteris paribus, making a given wage high (low) relative to other wage levels will lead to an increase (decrease) in labor supply. They find that labor supply does respond significantly to relative pay, and in the expected direction. However, when a strong enough reaso...

A peer worker is introduced in a controlled labor market experiment characterized by unobservable effort and incomplete contracts. Workers make decisions independently and without knowledge of each others’ actions in a modified gift exchange experiment. Introducing a peer worker into an ongoing market has a negative and significant effect on effort This decrease in effort is consistent with res...