“My own behavior baffles me. For I find myself not doing what I really want to do but doing what I really loathe.” Saint Paul What behavior can be explained using the hypothesis that the agent faces temptation but is otherwise a “standard rational agent”? In earlier work, Gul and Pesendorfer [2001] use a set betweenness axiom to restrict the set of preferences considered by Dekel, Lipman, and R...

I discuss the historical and conceptual roots of reasoning about the parameters of fundamental physics and cosmology based on selection effects. I argue concretely that such reasoning can and should be combined with arguments based on symmetry and dynamics; it supplements them, but does not replace them. * Summary talk at " Expectations of a Final Theory " , Trinity College, Cambridge, Septembe...

This paper argues that the relation between temptations and the level of consumption plays a key role in explaining the observed behaviors of the poor. Temptation goods are defined to be the set of goods that generate positive utility for the self that consumes them, but not for any previous self that anticipates that they will be consumed in the future. We show that the assumption of declining...

Popular reasoning theories postulate that the ability to inhibit inappropriate beliefs lies at the heart of the human reasoning engine. Given that people's inhibitory capacities are known to rise and fall across the lifespan, we predicted that people's deductive reasoning performance would show similar curvilinear age trends. A group of children (12-year-olds), young adults (20-year-olds), and ...

Although the war in Liberia in July 2003 claimed hundreds of lives, the international community was reluctant to intervene. In this article, the author debates the question: does international military intervention equal protection of populations? The role of humanitarian organisations in military intervention is considered. Aid organisations cannot call for deployment of a protection force wit...

We develop a quantitative dynamic general-equilibrium model where agents have preferences featuring temptation and self-control problems, and we apply it in order to understand to what extent standard investment/savings subsidies can improve welfare. The dynamic model of preferences builds on the Gul-Pesendorfer setting and uses a “quasigeometric” formulation for temptation, the strength of whi...

1980 This report < s divided into two parts; Part lisa comparative study of the behaviour of normal and retarded subjects in temptation to steal situations and Part II is a study of two procedures designed to facilitate the development of resistance to temptation behaviour.

Standard pricing theories consider consumers without temptation. With temptation and costly self-control, consumers dislike choice sets with tempting alternatives. We study firms’ strategy against such consumers, using Gul–Pesendorfer preferences and a game where firms compete by offering menus. JEL Classification: D43, L13, L15