the denomination effect labeled the denomination effect study 1 shows in three field studies that the likelihood of spending is lower when an equivalent sum of money is represented by a single large denomination e g one 20 bill relative to many smaller denominations e g 20 1 bills in two of the three field studies individuals spent more once the decision to spend had been made study 2 then shows that consumers deliberately choose to receive money in a large denomination relative to small denominations when there is a need to exert self control in spending study 3 further shows that the denomination effect is contingent on individual differences in people s desire to reduce the pain of paying associated with spending the results suggest that the denomination effect occurs because large denominations are psychologically less fungible than smaller ones allowing them to be used as a strategic device to control and regulate spending

the varying impacts of agricultural support programs on u s farm household consumption farm households are economic agents whose income is derived from farm off farm and government sources this article uses farm level data from the agricultural resource management survey arms and recent advances in the econometric theory of dynamic pseudo panels to show that farm households consume various sources of income differently at the margin particular attention is given to a specific type of lump sum government transfer payment intended to be decoupled from independent of farm production decisions the results suggest that relatively decoupled government subsidies have a greater marginal effect on farm household consumption than subsidies that are tied to market conditions farm households often receive income from off farm employment and government support payments in addition to farm production revenues if income is fungible then marginal consumption should not vary by income source however carriker et al 1993 show that farm household consumption does vary at the margin by income source they find that off farm income and income from government subsidies are consumed at a higher marginal rate than income from farm production revenues if farm household consumption varies at the margin by income source different types of government payments may affect consumption differently closely following carriker et al 1993 this analysis further disaggregates sources of farm household income and compares how different types of government payments affect farm household consumption it is shown that government payments that are relatively decoupled from farm production decisions are consumed at a much higher marginal rate than government payments that

discount rates and credit markets theory and evidence from rural india three models of credit markets 1 the permanent income model 2 upward sloping credit supply to individual borrowers and 3 constrained credit due to imperfect enforcement are tested using credit market data and an experimental study of individuals discount rates in south india the permanent income model is rejected by both the discount rate and the credit market data the discount rate data are consistent with either of the other two models while the credit market data are consistent with a combination of these two models other explanations are found to be insufficient to explain the results of this study

the role of personality traits in pension decisions findings and policy recommendations many countries need to stimulate pension participation and contribution to ensure their citizens are prepared adequately for retirement identifying at risk groups with tendencies of not joining pe

risk preferences around the world we present results from a large scale international survey on risk preferences conducted in 53 countries in all countries we find on average an attitude of risk aversion in gains and of risk seeking in losses the degree of risk aversion shows significant cross country differences moreover risk attitudes in our sample depend not only on economic conditions but also on cultural factors as measured by the hofstede dimensions individualism and uncertainty avoidance the data may also serve as an interesting starting point for further research on cultural differences in behavioral economics data as supplemental material are available at http dx doi org 10 1287 mnsc 2013 1869 this paper was accepted by peter wakker decision analysis

correlates of narrow bracketing we examine whether different phenomena of narrow bracketing can be traced back to some common characteristic and whether and how different phenomena are related we find that making dominated lottery choices or ignoring the endowment when making risky choices are related phenomena and are both associated with low levels of cognitive reflection in contrast the phenomena of setting narrow goals or narrow mental budgets seem not to reflect choice errors due to low cognitive reflection but are tools to overcome self control problems buying small scale insurance is associated with having narrow mental budgets suggesting that people buy such insurance to insure themselves against the consequences of their own self control strategy

ramsey discounting of ecosystem services most ecosystem services which are essential for human well being are globally declining while the production of consumption goods measured by gdp is still growing to adequately account for this opposite development in public cost benefit analyses it has been proposed based on a two goods extension of the ramsey growth model to apply good specific discount rates for manufactured consumption goods and for ecosystem services using empirical data for ten ecosystem services across five countries and the world at large we estimated the difference between the discount rates for ecosystem services and for manufactured consumption goods in a conservative estimate we found that ecosystem services in all countries should be discounted at rates that are significantly lower than the ones for manufactured consumption goods on global average ecosystem services should be discounted at a rate that is 0 9 pm 0 3 points lower than the one for manufactured consumption goods the difference is larger in less developed countries and smaller in more developed countries this result supports and substantiates the suggestion that public cost benefit analyses should use country specific dual discount rates one for manufactured consumption goods and one for ecosystem services

tourists spending and adherence to shopping plans the case of the christmas market in merano italy abstract the present paper investigates the determinants of tourists expenditure by categorizing tourists based on their mental budgets individuals can be divided into three categories based on the difference between their mental budget and actual expenditure underspenders on budget spenders and overspenders estimation of the empirical model is performed based on data collected through a survey of visitors to the christmas market in merano italy during advent in 2011 the estimation is performed with the heckman estimator ordered probit selection rule and linear regression we find that the spending patterns of visitors belonging to the three identified categories differ significantly analyzing visitors expenditure based on the proposed categorization allows us to identify category specific factors and develop management strategies for each category the managerial and theoretical implications of the results are discussed

how retirement saving programs increase saving this paper summarizes the authors work on the effect of ira and 401 k contributions on net personal saving they consider many different nonparametric approaches to controlling for heterogeneity in individual saving behavior and conclude that the weight of the available evidence suggests that contributions to both iras and 401 k s largely represent new saving the authors devote particular attention to reconciling their results with the findings in other studies that reach different conclusions sometimes using the same databases that the authors analyze methodological limitations that undermine the reliability of results in other studies explain many of these disparities

fiscal policy and economic recovery the case of the 1936 veterans bonus conventional wisdom has it that in the 1930s scal policy did not work because it was not tried this paper shows that scal policy though inadvertent was tried in 1936 and a variety of evidence suggests that it worked a decit nanced veterans bonus provided 3 2 million world war i veterans with cash and bond payments totaling 2 percent of gdp the typical veteran received a payment equal to annual per capita personal income this paper uses time series and cross sectional data to identify the eects of the bonus i exploit four sources of quantitative evidence a detailed household consumption survey cross state and cross city regressions aggregate time series and a previously unused american legion survey of veterans the evidence paints a consistent picture in which veterans quickly spent the majority of their bonus spending was concentrated on cars and housing in particular narrative accounts support these quantitative results a simple calculation suggests that the bonus added 2 5 to 3 percentage points to 1936 gdp growth

lifecycle consumption under different income profiles evidence and theory abstract we report on a series of economic decision making experiments exploring how individuals make lifecycle consumption and saving plans when they face different income profiles representing different pension replacement rates we aim to assess whether variations in pension replacement rates might aid or hinder individuals ability to make good lifecycle consumption and saving plans we find that pension replacement rates matter for subjects experimental payoffs and consumption behavior in particular our treatment with a 100 pension replacement rate yields the highest experimental payoff and more subjects in this treatment choose the status quo strategy of consuming endowments in every period we show that a model of rational inattention is useful for explaining subjects responses to different pension replacement rates

mental accounting effects of income tax shifting abstract this paper analyzes a 1992 decrease in u s federal income tax withholding that shifted the timing of income tax payments while leaving ultimate tax burdens unchanged consequently income typically received as a lump sum refund on filing a tax return was shifted into the previous year s monthly income this paper considers the impact of the withholding change in the context of mental accounting and finds a decrease in the probability that households contributed to a tax preferred retirement account additional robustness tests show that short term saving did not simultaneously increase and that the main findings are not driven by liquidity constraints

estimating the weight of opportunity costs in housing consumption abstractbehavioural economics suggests that people tend to neglect or underweight opportunity costs however strong empirical evidence for the size of the underweighting appears to be largely absent from the literature what are the weights people attach to opportunity costs relative to out of pocket costs in this article i estimate the weight of opportunity costs in probably the largest economic decision that households make buying a house i show that homeowners attach approximately twice as much weight to out of pocket costs of their housing consumption than to the opportunity costs associated with this

implications for gaap from an analysis of positive research in accounting based on extant literature we review the positive theory of gaap the theory predicts that gaap s principal focus is on control performance measurement and stewardship and that verifiability and conservatism are critical features of a gaap shaped by market forces we recognize the advantage of using fair values in circumstances where these are based on observable prices in liquid secondary markets but caution against expanding fair values to financial reporting more generally we conclude that rather than converging u s gaap with ifrs competition between the fasb and the iasb would allow gaap to better respond to market forces

locus of control and savings abstract this paper analyzes the relationship between individuals locus of control and their savings behavior i e wealth accumulation savings rates and portfolio choices locus of control is a psychological concept that captures individuals beliefs about the causal relationship between their own behavior and life events we find that households with an internal reference person a main respondent who believes that he she can generally control relevant aspects of life save more in terms of levels and in some cases as a percentage of their permanent incomes although the locus of control gap in savings rates is largest among rich households the gap in wealth accumulation is particularly large for poor households finally our findings indicate that households with an internal reference person are in a better position to save in forms that are harder to access such as pension wealth than otherwise similar households with an external reference person

neuroeconomics using neuroscience to make economic predictions neuroeconomics seeks to ground economic theory in detailed neural mechanisms which are expressed mathematically and make behavioural predictions one finding is that simple kinds of economising for life and death decisions food sex and danger do occur in the brain as rational theories assume another set of findings appears to support the neural basis of constructs posited in behavioural economics such as a preference for immediacy and nonlinear weighting of small and large probabilities a third direction shows how understanding neural circuitry permits predictions and causal experiments which show state dependence of revealed preference except that states are biological and neural variables

opportunity cost consideration normatively consumers should incorporate opportunity costs into every decision they make yet behavioral research suggests that consumers consider them rarely if at all this research addresses when consumers consider opportunity costs who considers opportunity costs which opportunity costs spontaneously spring to mind and what the consequences of considering opportunity costs are perceived constraints cue consumers to consider opportunity costs and consumers high in propensity to plan consider opportunity costs even when not cued by immediate constraints the specific alternatives retrieved and the likelihood of retrieval are functions of category structures in memory for a given resource some uses are more typical of the category of possible uses and so are more likely to be considered as opportunity costs consumers who consider opportunity costs are less likely to buy focal options than those who do not when opportunity costs are appealing but no less likely when opportunity costs are unappe

how many paychecks an example of a self imposed constraint i introduction the case of ulysses and the sirens is one of the most interesting puzzles for the model of rational behavior 1 ulysses knew enough about himself to know that he would not be able to control his behavior when under the spell of the sirens so he had himself bound to the mast had wax put into the ears of his crew and instructed them to completely disregard any gestures he might make it is reasonable to ask if ulysses knew enough to know that he would lose control when under the spell of the sirens why didn t he know enough to maintain control more generally if you are rational enough to know you are going to be irrational why can t you stop the irrationality apparently things are not so simple psychiatrist george ainslie 1975 1992 argues based upon a large body of experimental evidence in psychology that individuals have an inherent tendency to be myopic and this leads them to have to develop rules of behavior which limit options given the story of ulysses the process of imposing such constraints on oneself is sometimes called binding the christmas club is the traditional example of a self imposed constraint 2 the local credit union offers an account which has all of the attributes of the normal savings account and the added characteristic that the account holder cannot make any withdrawals until a specified date close to christmas given that the lack of flexibility inherent in the christmas club is combined with no compensating advantage of any sort e g higher interest rates standard analysis suggests the christmas club would have no takers but in fact there are many christmas club members 3 apparently a large number of individuals feel they cannot trust themselves to save money for christmas shopping in a normal savings account the christmas club gives them a way of tying their hands it is a self imposed constraint in this paper i examine behavior which might also be an example of a self imposed constraint at the college of william and mary a full time faculty member has the option of receiving her salary in eighteen equal payments over the nine month academic year or in twenty four equal payments over the entire year starting in september the twenty four month option has the look of a self imposed constraint 4 the faculty member who takes this option is foregoing interest earnings from a simple plan which deposits eighteen payments earns interest and finances the summer perhaps the faculty members who elect the twenty four payment option are like ulysses they know enough to know that they will not follow the plan they know enough to make a preference for the twenty four payment option is not necessarily evidence of a self imposed constraint taking eighteen payments squirreling away some of each payment and financing one s summer expenditures from what had accumulated during the academic year is a costly endeavor therefore a standard economic model based on transactions costs could also explain a preference for the twenty four payment option the purpose of this paper is to present a test of these two models ii theoretical analyses of the choice of the twenty four payment option a standard economic model the task at hand is to explain the demand for the twenty four payment option as compared to the eighteen payment option since the total salary is the same in both cases at any nonzero interest rate the present value of the eighteen payment option dominates the present value of the twenty four payment option this suggests that on a strict basis of economic rationality there would be no takers for the twenty four payment option at william and mary however over 67 percent of the faculty choose the twenty four payment option there is however a clear difficulty with simply comparing present values in this case such a comparison implicitly assumes that trips to the bank are costless a complete model should consider transactions costs

choice simplification a theory of mental budgeting and naive diversification we develop a theory of how an agent makes basic multiproduct consumption decisions in the presence of taste consumption opportunity and price shocks that are costly to attend to we establish that the agent often simplifies her choices by restricting attention to a few important considerations which depend on the decision at hand and affect her consumption patterns in specific ways if the agent s problem is to choose the consumption levels of many goods with different degrees of substitutability then she may create mental budgets for more substitutable products e g entertainment in some situations it is optimal to specify budgets in terms of consumption quantities but when most products have an abundance of substitutes specifying budgets in terms of nominal spending tends to be optimal if the goods are complements in contrast then the agent may consistent with naive diversification choose a fixed unconsidered mix of products and if the agent s problem is to choose one of multiple products to fulfill a given consumption need e g for gasoline or a bed then it is often optimal for her to allocate a fixed sum for the need

the fewer the better number of goals and savings behavior abstract this article examines the effect of the number of goals on consumers savings behavior drawing from research on implementation intention the authors show that under certain conditions presenting a single savings goal leads to greater savings intention and actual savings than presenting multiple savings goals multiple goals typically evoke trade offs among competing goals and thus increase the likelihood that people will remain in a deliberative mind set and defer actions in contrast the authors propose and demonstrate that a single goal evokes a stronger implementation intention which in turn has a greater effect on behavior change they also show that the advantage of a single goal over multiple goals on saving is attenuated when saving is easier to implement or when the multiple savings goals are integrated rather than competing among themselves theoretical and practical implications are discussed

do 401 k contributions crowd out other personal saving during the late 1980s contributions to 401 k plans eclipsed contributions to individual retirement accounts iras as the leading form of tax deferred individual retirement saving in the united states in this paper we describe patterns of participation in 401 k plans contrast these patterns with ira participation and evaluate the net impact of 401 k contributions on personal saving we find that 401 k participation conditional on eligibility exceeds 60 at all income levels in contrast ira participation at the height of that program rose sharply with income we use two methods to evaluate the net saving effect of 401 k contributions on personal saving we compare the financial assets of families who are eligible for 401 k saving with the assets of those who are not eligible and we consider the change over time in the assets of like groups of savers we find little evidence that 401 k contributions substitute for other forms of personal saving including ira contributions

the wealth age relation among the aged aged people face the problem of allocating over the rest of their lifetimes the wealth that they have accumulated during their working years this problem is fairly complex because they are uncertain about the dates of their death and because they may wish to use their wealth to finance general consumption or hold it to meet emergencies leave estates or maintain power or status whether skilled at dynamic programming or not aged people effectively do make these decisions what are the results some studies of the entire lifetime pattern of saving and wealth tend to support the simple life cycle model in which the aged use up their wealth to help finance consumption harold lydall for example found saving rates to increase and then decrease with age in the whole population and to be negative for the group aged 65 and over guarded support for the theory was found by franco modigliani and albert ando in britain and by dorothy projector in the united states more recently a f shorrocks examined the lifetime pattern of wealth holding in estate tax data for a single cohort and found the hump pattern that is characteristic of life cycle saving other evidence on wealth holding runs contrary to this however in a study of estate tax returns in washington d c james d smith found that wealth increased with age among the aged after controlling for other demographic variables examining national estate tax data john brittain found wealth to increase with age in the united states and a b atkinson and a j harrison reported the same pattern in england and wales in a sample of tiaa annuity recipients analyzed by james mulanaphy over half reported that their total savings had increased during retirement and another quarter reported that their savings had remained about the same in this paper i examine wealth holding patterns among aged married couples using survey data representing the entire aged population of the united states in 1968 the statistical analysis serves as a test of the hypothesis that emerges from life cycle theory and provides some further exploration into the economic behavior of the aged i find that the aged tend to increase their wealth over time

changing time attitudes in intertemporal analysis intertemporal analysis is extended by generalizing the time weight function of an investor s utility function to account for changes in time attitudes the resulting measures of decreasing constant and increasing time attitudes are comparable to the arrow pratt measures of risk attitudes they help to enrich intertemporal theory provide meaningful hypotheses for testing and broaden the scope for decision analysis over time effects of the time attitude measures are illustrated in a model of an agricultural firm

rational and behavioral motives to trade evidence from reinvestment of dividends and tender offer proceeds abstract we provide evidence of households stock market trading in response to clearly identifiable positive cash flow shocks dividend payments and tender offer proceeds transaction cost motives appear important and there is some support for rational portfolio rebalancing and life cycle considerations as well households tendency to reinvest is low even for large and unexpected dividend payments this is consistent with a default choice bias and is not due to dividend clientele effects reinvestment of tender offer proceeds is significantly higher controlling for other important factors this is consistent with mental accounting i e cash flows from different sources are treated differently

mental budgeting and consumer decisions consumers often set budgets for categories of expenses e g entertainment and track expenses against their budget because budgets cannot perfectly anticipate consumption opportunities people may earmark too much or too little money for a particular category this leads them to overconsume or underconsume goods in that category the results of three studies suggest that consumers do indeed set budgets and that budgeting may lead to underconsumption to show that consumers track expenses the studies demonstrate that budgeting effects are larger for purchases that are highly typical of their category such purchases reduce the amount people spend in a category and block the purchase of other typical items the studies control for satiation and income effects thus budgeting adds predictive power to standard economic consumer theory

psychology and savings policies many observers of the current economic scene are concerned about the low rate of personal saving in the united states one well known researcher laurence kotlikoff 1992 calls the situation a crisis he proposes that each american worker receive an annual statement from the social security administration with projected benefits upon retirement arguing that if each of us got this statement our attention would be caught and perhaps our psychology of saving which is in such urgent need of redress would really change p 107 i agree with the thrust of kotlikoff s recommendations and join him in applauding steps that will alter the general public s psychology of saving however as economists we need to recognize that the economic theory of saving is similarly in urgent need of redress if we are to understand why people are saving so little and are to make helpful recommendations as to how to get people to save more we have to incorporate more of the psychology of saving into our economic theories kotlikoff s policy proposal while a sensible one highlights the growing gap between theory and policy prescription in this domain if households are acting in accordance with the life cycle theory of saving then undersaving is impossible so why do they need to have their psychology redressed and how does this psychology fit into the model this example reflects an increasing frustration in the economics community about personal saving many observers have come to the conclusion that the low saving rate represents an important problem on two fronts macroeconomists worry that the low saving rate will produce too little investment and microeconomists worry that individuals particularly the baby boomers are not putting enough away to finance a satisfactory lifestyle in retirement these are serious concerns however the frustration comes from the realization that even if there was agreement that the saving rate needs to go up economic theory offers little help in constructing a solution in the standard life cycle framework the only policy variable is the after tax rate of return to saving yet it is well known that the theory does not specify the sign of the relationship between the saving rate and the interest rate raising the interest rate increases the returns to saving but decreases the amount of saving necessary to yield any given future consumption level furthermore empirical estimates offer little help most studies are unable to reject the hypothesis that the elasticity of personal saving with respect to the interest rate is zero clearly this is frustrating the theory only gives us one lever to use and we don t know whether to push or pull with this background i wish to supply what should be considered good news the theory is misspecified life cycle models of saving fail to describe actual household saving in three important ways this failure of the theory is good news because by incorporating some basic psychology we can enrich the theory and generate specific policy recommendations in this paper i will begin by characterizing the problems with the theory and then go on to discussing the implications of modifying the theory

cash on hand and the duration of job search quasi experimental evidence from norway we investigate the causal eect of lump sum severance payments on job search duration in norway identi cation is achieved by exploiting dis continuities in the available amounts along the age and time dimensions the results can be interpreted as evidence of liquidity constraints thus suggesting that in the spirit of the baily chetty model of optimal unem ployment insurance current bene ts are too low since norway has one of the most equitable wealth distributions and one of the most generous ui systems of all oecd economies this suggests that liquidity constraints are likely to matter also in other oecd economies

wages seniority and the demand for rising consumption profiles abstract in many occupations wages rise faster than productivity over the life cycle other authors have suggested a variety of explanations for this pattern we argue that these explanations fail for at least two occupations commercial airline pilots and intercity bus drivers we then explore an alternative explanation based on the assumption that satisfaction depends on not only the level of consumption but also its rate of change we argue that upward sloping wage profiles are an expedient substitute for personal savings as a means for achieving upward sloping consumpion profiles

a dual self model of impulse control we propose that a simple dual self model gives a unified explanation for several empirical regularities including the apparent time inconsistency that has motivated models of quasi hyperbolic discounting and rabin s paradox of risk aversion in the large and small the model also implies that self control costs imply excess delay as in the o donoghue and rabin models of quasi hyperbolic utility and it explains experimental evidence that increased cognitive load makes temptations harder to resist the base version of our model is consistent with the gul pesendorfer axioms but we argue that these axioms must be relaxed to account for the effect of cognitive load

pension wealth and household savings tests of robustness abstract a substantial literature exists on the impact of pension schemes both public and private on the level of household saving yet there is no clear consensus on the impact of pensions on private saving in this paper we show how beliefs about this displacement effect are modified by prior beliefs both about variables which might be relevant in an equation for private savings and about the magnitude of the displacement effect using data for 8279 canadian households and estimates of pension wealth both private and social security which we construct for each household in the sample the estimated displacement effects are found to be relatively robust with respect to both types of prior belief

the effects of lottery prizes on winners and their neighbors evidence from the dutch postcode lottery each week the dutch postcode lottery pcl randomly selects a postal code and distributes cash and a new bmw to lottery participants in that code we study the effects of these shocks on lottery winners and their neighbors consistent with the life cycle hypothesis the effects on winners consumption are largely confined to cars and other durables consistent with the theory of in kind transfers the vast majority of bmw winners liquidate their bmws we do however detect substantial social effects of lottery winnings pcl nonparticipants who live next door to winners have significantly higher levels of car consumption than other nonparticipants

dynamic decision making with feasibility goals a procedural rationality approach this paper proposes a new framework of intertemporal choice decision making by means of so called feasibility goals these refer to the feasibility of certain target levels of consumption associated with specific future benchmark scenarios the feasibility goals framework takes into account bounded procedural rationality without stepping outside the realm of an optimization framework the paper has two aims first it provides a general characterization of the feasibility goals framework second it provides a simple life cycle model with feasibility goals to illustrate the applicability of the concept the life cycle model is promising for better understanding individual portfolio choice

experimental tests of ricardian equivalence this study employs laboratory experiments to test aspects of ricardian equivalence an overlapping generations model forms the basis of the experimental design whenever ricardian equivalence predicts a positive bequest outcomes close to those predicted occur after allowance for learning observed deviations from ricardian equilibrium are small but biased in a keynesian direction changes in bequests do not fully offset changes in government debt the imposition of a binding nonnegativity constraint on bequests produces the predicted neoclassical behavior the cost to the players of deviations from the theoretical equilibrium is apparently an important determinant of the variability of observed deviations

from the static to the dynamic some problems in the theory of taxation abstract this paper considers problems and issues that arise when we attempt to extend the static theory of taxation and production planning to a dynamic context and to combine that theory with theories of growth the reasons dynamic theory is less developed include problems with the analytical tractability of even those dynamic models which attempt to retain the basic structure of the static model furthermore difficult and interesting issues arise in a dynamic context which are either not present or are much less severe in the static theory special attention is paid to these new issues and the difficulties they pose

the abcs of financial education experimental evidence on attitudes behavior and cognitive biases this paper uses a large scale field experiment in india to study attitudinal behavioral and cognitive constraints that stymie the link between financial education and financial outcomes the study complements financial education with i participant classroom motivation with pay for performance on a knowledge test ii intensity of treatment with personalized financial counseling and iii behavioral nudges with financial goal setting the analysis finds no impact of pay for performance but significant effects of both counseling and goal setting on real financial outcomes these results identify important complements to financial education that can bridge the gap between financial knowledge and financial behavior change

the behavioral life cycle hypothesis self control mental accounting and framing are incorporated in a behavioral enrichment of the life cycle theory of saving called the behavioral life cycle blc hypothesis the key assumption of the blc theory is that households treat components of their wealth as nonfungible even in the absence of credit rationing specifically wealth is assumed to be divided into three mental accounts current income current assets and future income the temptation to spend is assumed to be greatest for current income and least for future income considerable empirical support for the blc theory is presented primarily drawn from published econometric studies

the effects of financial education in the workplace evidence from a survey of employers we examine the effects of education on financial decision making skills by identifying an interesting source of variation in pertinent training during the 1990s an increasing number of individuals were exposed to programs of financial education provided by their employers if as some have argued low saving frequently results from a failure to appreciate economic vulnerabilities then education of this form could prove to have a powerful effect on behavior the current paper undertakes an analysis of these programs using a previously unexploited survey of employers we find that both participation in and contributions to voluntary savings plans are significantly higher when employers offer retirement seminars the effect is typically much stronger for non highly compensated employees than for highly compensated employees the frequency of seminars emerges as a particularly important correlate of behavior we are unable to detect any effects of written materials such as newsletters and summary plan descriptions regardless of frequency we also present evidence on other determinants of plan activity

reassessing the government s discount rate policy in light of new theory and data in a world economy with a high degree of capital mobility abstract the paper reexamines the government s discount rate policy in the context of new evidence on international capital mobility the relationship between deficits and interest rates the relationship between consumer interest rates and the consumer s rate of time preference and intergenerational compensation it concludes that the approximate discount rate for government decisions will differ depending on the policy problem and that the government s borrowing rate is appropriate in some cases and in others the private rate should be used for long term policies the benefit cost rationale for discounting breaks down and must be reestablished on principles incorporating intergenerational equity

the effect of credit on spending decisions the role of the credit limit and credibility the objective of the present research is to study consumer decisions to utilize a line of credit the life cycle hypothesis from economics argues that consumers should intertemporally reallocate their incomes over their life stream to maximize lifetime utility one form of intertemporal allocation is to use past income in the form of savings in the future a second form is the use of future income in the present this can only be done if consumers have access to a temporary pool of money that they can draw from and replenish in the future a function performed by consumer credit however our research reinforces prior findings that consumers are unable to correctly value their future incomes and that they lack the cognitive capability to solve the intertemporal optimization problem required by the life cycle hypothesis instead we argue that consumers use information such as the credit limit as a signal of their future earnings potential specifically if consumers have access to large amounts of credit they are likely to infer that their lifetime income will be high and hence their willingness to use credit and their spending will also be high conversely consumers who are granted lower amounts of credit are likely to infer that their lifetime income will be low and hence their spending will be lower however based on research in the area of consumer skepticism and inference making we also argue for a moderating role of the credibility associated with the credit limit specifically we argue that the above effect of credit availability would be particularly strong for consumers who believe that the credit limit credibly signals their future earnings potential i e a naive consumer who has limited experience with consumer credit however as consumers gain experience with credit they start discounting credit availability as a predictor of their future and start questioning the validity of the process used to set the credit limit hence with experience the effect of credit limit on the willingness to use credit should be attenuated we test these predictions in five separate studies in the first experimental study we manipulate credit limit and credibility and pose subjects with a hypothetical purchase opportunity consistent with our prediction credit limit impacted the propensity to spend but only when the credibility was high in the second experimental study we replicate these findings even when subjects were given information about their expected future salaries and also show that the credit limit influences their expectation of future earnings potential in the third study we show that the mere availability and increase of current liquidity cannot explain our findings in the fourth study we conduct a survey of consumers in which we measure a number of demographic characteristics and also ask them for their propensity to spend in a given purchase situation in the fifth study we use the survey of consumer finances scf dataset a triennial survey of u s families that is designed to provide detailed information on the use of financial services spending behaviors and selected demographic characteristics results from both studies 4 and 5 provide further support for our proposed framework credit limits influence spending to a greater extent for consumers with lower credibility younger consumers and less educated consumers across all studies we achieved triangulation by using a variety of approaches surveys and experiments subjects types young students and older consumers nature of predictor variables manipulated and measured dependent measures purchase likelihood credit card balance new charges and methods of analysis anova and regression and consistently found that increasing credit limits on a credit card increases spending especially when the credibility of the limit is high this paper joins a growing body of literature in marketing and behavioral decision theory that goes beyond the traditional domains of inquiry e g product choice effects of marketing mix variables and focuses on consumer decisions relating to the appropriate use of income to finance consumption our framework differs from prior research on the effect of payment mechanisms on spending in two significant ways first we are interested in the effects of the availability of credit on spending and not necessarily in the effect of the transaction format that is associated with each payment mechanism second while prior research has studied the point of purchase and historic i e prepurchase effects of credit the present research is concerned with the availability of credit in the future specifically our framework is invariant to the current and prior usage of credit by the consumer

the behavioral life cycle theory of consumer behavior survey evidence we find that survey evidence on faculty pay cycle choice strongly contradicts the neoclassical theory of consumer behavior it is more favorable to the behavioral life cycle theory of economic inquiry 26 1988 609

life cycle saving insights from the perspective of bounded rationality this paper provides a new life cycle model that takes into account key elements of bounded rationality the paper shows that the model can account for patterns in the data that are hard to explain by the standard life cycle model among other patterns the model predicts that typically the young either hold no equity or their equity portfolio share is rather low and then increases over working life the analytical solution of the model demonstrates its high degree of tractability

stock market wealth and consumer spending martha starr mccluer this article investigates the effects of stock market wealth on consumer spending traditional macroeconometric models estimate that a dollar s increase in stock wealth boosts consumption by three to seven cents with the substantial 1990s rise in stock prices the nature and magnitude of this wealth effect have been much debated after describing the issues and previous research i present new evidence from a well known consumer survey the results are broadly consistent with life cycle saving and a modest wealth effect most stockholders reported no appreciable effect of stock prices on their saving or spending but many mentioned retirement saving in explaining their behavior jel e21 e30 d12 i introduction the relationship between stock market wealth and consumer spending has been a subject of long standing interest traditional macroeconometric models estimate that a dollar s increase in household wealth boosts consumer spending by three to seven cents per year such an effect is consistent with predictions from a simple life cycle model in which consumers spend more over their lifetimes in response to higher wealth however the stock market is known to play a role as a passive predictor of information thus it is also possible that stock prices simply lead aggregate economic activity without any short run change in spending induced by changes in wealth understanding the response of spending to changes in wealth is important for determining how stock market fluctuations affect the macroeconomy the question also bears directly on theories of saving behavior and on the issue of retirement preparedness by today s workers the experience of the past few years provides an interesting opportunity to revisit this issue stock prices increased substantially in the 1990s with the standard poor s 500 more than doubling from 1994 to 1997 and rising another 44 through 1999 at the same time stock ownership broadened considerably mostly through mutual funds and retirement accounts so that a large number of households likely experienced wealth gains the increase in wealth might be expected to boost consumer spending and lower the saving rate and indeed these trends occurred however it is hard to separate the influence of the wealth effect from other factors that also would have promoted spending such as strong income growth and favorable labor market conditions this article presents some new evidence on the response of spending to changes in wealth the data come from the michigan survey research center src survey of consumers an ongoing nationally representative survey of u s households in interviews conducted between july and september 1997 households owning stock were asked special questions about their spending and saving the questions covered a number of factors that may influence the effect of wealth on spending including the value and form of stockholdings stock price expectations concerns about retirement and perceptions of income uncertainty in brief the results are broadly consistent with life cycle saving and a modest wealth effect the vast majority of stockholders reported no appreciable effect of stock prices on their spending or saving but many mentioned retirement saving in explaining their behavior the next section reviews previous research on the relationship between stock market wealth and consumer spending the third section describes the data from the michigan survey and the fourth presents the results a final section summarizes and concludes ii background and previous research to frame the discussion it is useful to review how an unexpected increase in wealth would affect consumption in a simple lifecycle model this model though restrictive in its assumptions provides valuable intuition about the propensity to consume unexpected stock gains consequences of refinements to the model are discussed below

when does money make money more important survey and experimental evidence the authors investigate how the amount and source of income affects the importance placed on money using a longitudinal analysis of the british household panel survey and evidence from two laboratory experiments they found that larger amounts of money received for labor were associated with individuals placing greater importance on money but this effect did not hold for money not related to work the longitudinal survey analysis demonstrated these differential effects of the source of income on money s importance while holding constant stable individual differences the experiments provide causal evidence that the source of income has an effect on the importance of money as well as on the effort expended to earn more money the authors results suggest that even as individual differences in the importance placed on money may affect peoples income depending on its source income can also affect the importance people place on money

the behavioral relevance of mental accounting for the pricing of financial options abstract the paper reports an experiment on the pricing of financial options arbitrage free option pricing is tested against three hypotheses based on mental accounting the data show that even with considerable experience unexploited arbitrage opportunities persist subjects do not seem to make the connections between the different investment possibilities as essential for arbitrage free pricing afp instead they act as if they associate the risky assets to the same mental account while the bond is treated separately this corresponds to the construction of a two layer portfolio of a risky and a safe layer in the behavioral portfolio theory of shefrin and statman j fin quant anal 35 2000 127

self command in practice in policy and in a theory of rational choice an increasingly familiar occurrence for obstetricians is being asked by patients to withhold anesthesia during delivery the physician often proposes that a facemask be put beside the patient who may inhale nitrous oxide as she needs it but some determined patients ask that no such opportunity be provided if gas is available they will use it and they want not to be able to the request is interesting for decision theory and raises questions of ethics policy and physician responsibility even if the woman is merely making a mistake if she simply does not know how painful labor will be and how glad she will be even in retrospect if the pain is relieved but some women who make this request have had earlier deliveries during which they demanded anesthesia and received it they are acquainted with the pain they anticipate asking for relief and they want it withheld when they do they expect to regret afterwards any recourse to anesthesia this particular instance of attempted selfdenial has features that are special but many that are common the woman is so far as we know in good health physically and mentally she anticipates a transient period when her usual values and preferences will be suspended or inaccessible she has reasons for wanting to frustrate her own wishes at the critical time she needs cooperation she may ratify her choice afterward by expressing herself grateful that no anesthesia was offered even when requested there are ethical dilemmas and legal issues and there is conflict if say the husband disagrees with the physician in the delivery room about what his wife really wants

endogenous time preferences of forest goods and community based forest management abstract in the economic analysis of cbfm people s discount rates are assumed exogenous and same for all goods we examined the validity of this assumption by eliciting the discount rates of households for grass timber fuelwood and money and analyzed the impacts of various personal and economic factors on households discount rates we found that time preferences are endogenous and good specific a good proportion of households have infinite discount rates for forest goods the mean values of monthly discount rates for households that indicated finite discount rates are 0 67 for timber 6 83 for fuelwood 55 49 for grass and 3 47 for money the availability of alternative sources and current consumption of the forest goods are two main determinants of a household s discount rates the study provides many useful insights for the design and implementation of cbfm programs the concept of mental accounting should be used for economic analyses of cbfm programs different management strategies should be adopted for different forest goods and alternative sources should be provided to meet the current needs of the households

inequality the great recession and slow recovery rising inequality reduced income growth for the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution beginning about 1980 but that group s consumption growth did not fall proportionally instead lower saving led to increasing balance sheet fragility for the bottom 95 percent eventually triggering the great recession we decompose consumption and saving across income groups the consumptionincome ratio of the bottom 95 percent fell sharply in the recession consistent with tighter borrowing constraints the top 5 percent ratio rose consistent with consumption smoothing the inability of the bottom 95 percent to generate adequate demand helps explain the slow recovery

optimal dividend strategies with time inconsistent preferences abstract this paper studies the optimal dividend strategies of an insurance company when the manager has time inconsistent preferences we consider the problem for a naive manager and a sophisticated manager and analytically derive the optimal dividend strategies when claim sizes follow an exponential distribution our results show that the manager with time inconsistent preferences tends to pay out dividends earlier than her time consistent counterpart and that the sophisticated manager is more inclined to pay out dividends than the naive manager furthermore we extend these results to the case with claim sizes following a mixed exponential distribution and provide a numerical analysis to reveal the sensitivity of the optimal dividend strategies to changes in the premium claims and surplus volatility

spatial lock in do falling house prices constrain residential mobility abstract falling house prices have caused numerous homeowners to suffer capital losses those with little home equity may be prevented from moving because of imperfections in housing finance markets the proceeds from the sale of their home may be insufficient to repay their mortgage and provide a down payment on a new home a data set of mortgages is used to examine the magnitude of these constraints estimates show that average mobility would have been 24 higher after 3 years had house prices not declined and after 4 years it would have been 33 higher among those with high initial loan to value ratios the differences are even greater

rules of thumb in life cycle saving decisions we analyse life cycle saving decisions when households use simple heuristics or rules of thumb rather than solve the underlying intertemporal optimisation problem we simulate life cycle saving decisions using three simple rules and compute utility losses relative to the solution of the optimisation problem our simulations suggest that utility losses induced by following simple decision rules are relatively low moreover the two main saving motives reflected by the canonical life cycle model long run consumption smoothing and short run insurance against income shocks can be addressed quite well by saving rules that do not require computationally demanding tasks such as backwards induction

the effect of the financial crisis on the retirement plans of older workers in england this letter revisits the question of how wealth shocks influence retirement behaviour exploiting the dramatic changes in uk asset prices between 2008 and 2009 as a source of such shocks we find no evidence that the wealth shocks arising from this recent financial crisis affected the retirement plans of older workers in england

parental net wealth and personal consumption this paper uses data from the 1988 to 1991 psid to examine the relationship between parental net wealth and consumption behavior of adult children in a model where the probability of receiving a future transfer from the parent is an increasing function of the level of parental net wealth a non linear relationship is expected the results in this study are consistent with such a relationship parental net wealth is found to have a positive influence on children s consumption only at very high levels in addition this relationship appears to apply only to parental housing wealth and not parental non housing wealth

sensitivity to market incentives the case of policy loans the standard neoclassical theory is rejected as an explanation for the observed reluctance of most holders of whole life insurance to borrow against the cash value of their policies at favorable rates of interest even when the neoclassical theory is augmented with transactions costs and short awareness lags several empirical tests using survey and time series data reject the standard theory in favor of an explanation invoking self imposed rules against borrowing or the debt ethic this evidence lends support to the psychology based theories of thaler and shefrin 1981 copyright 1987 by mit press

the red and the black mental accounting of savings and debt in the standard economic account of consumer behavior the cost of a purchase takes the form of a reduction in future utility when expenditures that otherwise could have been made are forgone the reality of consumer hedonics is different when people make purchases they often experience an immediate pain of paying which can undermine the pleasure derived from consumption the ticking of the taxi meter for example reduces one s pleasure from the ride we propose a double entry mental accounting theory that describes the nature of these reciprocal interactions between the pleasure of consumption and the pain of paying and draws out their implications for consumer behavior and hedonics a central assumption of the model which we call prospective accounting is that consumption that has already been paid for can be enjoyed as if it were free and that the pain associated with payments made prior to consumption but not after is buffered by thoughts of the benefits that the payments will finance another important concept is coupling which refers to the degree to which consumption calls to mind thoughts of payment and vice versa some financing methods such as credit cards tend to weaken coupling whereas others such as cash payment produce tight coupling our model makes a variety of predictions that are at variance with economic formulations contrary to the standard prediction that people will finance purchases to minimize the present value of payments our model predicts strong debt aversion that they should prefer to prepay for consumption or to get paid for work after it is performed such pay before sequences confer hedonic benefits because consumption can be enjoyed without thinking about the need to pay for it in the future likewise when paying beforehand the pain of paying is mitigated by thoughts of future consumption benefits contrary to the economic prediction that consumers should prefer to pay at the margin for what they consume our model predicts that consumers will find it less painful to pay for and hence will prefer flat rate pricing schemes such as unlimited internet access at a fixed monthly price even if it involves paying more for the same usage other predictions concern spending patterns with cash charge or credit cards and preferences for the earmarking of purchases we test these predictions in a series of surveys and in a conjoint like analysis that pitted our double entry mental accounting model against a standard discounting formulation and another benchmark that did not incorporate hedonic interactions between consumption and payments our model provides a better fit of the data for 60 of the subjects the discounting formulation provides a better fit for only 29 of the subjects even when allowing for positive and negative discount rates the pain of paying we argue plays an important role in consumer self regulation but is hedonically costly from a hedonic perspective the ideal situation is one in which payments are tightly coupled to consumption so that paying evokes thoughts about the benefits being financed but consumption is decoupled from payments so that consumption does not evoke thoughts about payment from an efficiency perspective however it is important for consumers to be aware of what they are paying for consumption this creates a tension between hedonic efficiency and what we call decision efficiency various institutional arrangements such as financing of public parks through taxes or usage fees play into this tradeoff a producer developing a pricing structure for their product or service should be aware of these two conflicting objectives and should try to devise a structure that reconciles them

barriers to formal saving micro and macroeconomic effects this paper examines different barriers to formal saving considering various interventions and their possible effects at microeconomic and macroeconomic levels it presents a comprehensive review of the literature based on a detailed classification of the barriers associated with supply side factors related to access to financial products and demand side barriers related to the use and frequency of use of those products the paper concludes that this classification and analysis contributes to a fuller understanding of the question of financial inclusion and how to achieve it

effects of payment mechanism on spending behavior the role of rehearsal and immediacy of payments past expenses have been shown to influence future spending behavior by depleting available budgets however a prerequisite for this relationship is the accurate recall of past payments and the experiencing of the full aversive impact associated with them this article shows that the use of different payment mechanisms influences both these factors and hence moderates the effects of past payments on future spending specifically past payments strongly reduce purchase intention when the payment mechanism requires the consumer to write down the amount paid rehearsal and when the consumer s wealth is depleted immediately rather than with a delay immediacy two experiments show support for the proposed theoretical framework

aging and the income value of housing wealth abstract the potential of reverse annuity mortgages to increase the current income of the elderly is analyzed we conclude that most low income elderly also have little housing equity in general a reverse annuity mortgage would substantially affect the income only of the single elderly who are very old whose life expectancy is short on the other hand if the transfer were in the form of a lump sum payment rather than an annuity the payment would increase the liquid wealth of most elderly families by a large fraction thus legislation that would facilitate the market for reverse mortgages could improve substantially the financial status of a small proportion of the elderly

what accounts for the variation in retirement wealth among u s households even among households with similar socioeconomic characteristics saving and wealth vary considerably life cycle models attribute this variation to differences in time preference rates risk tolerance exposure to uncertainty relative tastes for work and leisure at advanced ages and income replacement rates these factors have testable implications concerning the relation between accumulated wealth and the shape of the consumption profile using the panel study of income dynamics and the consumer expenditure survey we find little support for these implications the data are instead consistent with rule of thumb mental accounting or hyperbolic discounting theories of wealth accumulation jel di d91 e21

the brain as a hierarchical organization based on recent neuroscience evidence we model the brain as a dual system organization subject to three conflicts asymmetric information temporal hori zon and incentive salience under the first and second conflicts we show that the uninformed system imposes a positive link between consumption and labor at every period furthermore decreasing impatience endogenously emerges as a consequence of these two conflicts under the first and third conflicts it becomes optimal to set a consumption cap finally we discuss the behavioral implications of these rules for choice bracketing and expense tracking and for consumption over the life cycle jel dil d74 d82 d87 d91

multiple unit holdings yield attenuated endowment effects previous endowment effect experiments have examined circumstances in which people encounter a single unit of a good e g one chocolate we contrast single unit treatments with multiple unit treatments in which participants encounter several units of a good e g five chocolates we observe endowment effects of typical magnitude for singleton holdings but attenuated endowment effects for multiple unit holdings moreover endowment effects consistently arise for singletons even as the definition of a unit is altered for instance participants holding one piece of chocolate show an endowment effect of standard size but so do participants holding one box of chocolates yet the box contains about 20 individual pieces of chocolate and participants given that many separate pieces show a substantially attenuated endowment effect we thus propose the property of unit dependence the definition of a unit can change but contingent on any given definition a pronounced endowment effect may emerge for singletons but not multiples this paper was accepted by teck ho decision analysis

understanding the heterogeneity of savings and asset allocation a behavioral economics perspective why do saving rates and the proportion of savings invested in stocks substantially increase with income this paper sheds light on this question from the perspective of a new bounded rationality life cycle model it has been shown elsewhere that this model is better than existing ones at predicting how savings and asset allocation choices vary over the life cycle in this paper it is shown that a very simple version of the same model also allows for a better understanding of the variation in savings and asset allocation choices across income groups

nonlinear pricing with self control preferences a basic assumption of economics is that consumers choose what they want however many consumers find it difficult to stop overeating overspending smoking procrastinating etc even though they want to in reality consumers have temptation and it is psychologically costly to exercise self control to clarify the implications of the existence of temptation and self control costs this paper studies a firm s optimal selling strategy exploiting the behavioral features of consumers we characterize optimal nonlinear pricing schemes for a monopoly when self control is costly for consumers since consumers have a preference for commitment the firm faces a trade off between offering a small menu that makes the consumers self control easier and offering a large menu that achieves better price discrimination we show that the optimal menu resembles the one in the standard nonlinear pricing problem with a price ceiling where the upper bound on prices is determined endogenously by a participation constraint the ceiling motivates the firm to offer a relatively flat and compact price schedule serving more consumers with low demand the characterization also shows that the firm may earn less if consumers have temptation

tying odysseus to the mast evidence from a commitment savings product in the philippines we designed a commitment savings product for a philippine bank and implemented it using a randomized control methodology the savings product was intended for individuals who want to commit now to restrict access to their savings and who were sophisticated enough to engage in such a mechanism we conducted a baseline survey on 1777 existing or former clients of a bank one month later we offered the commitment product to a randomly chosen subset of 710 clients 202 28 4 percent accepted the offer and opened the account in the baseline survey we asked hypothetical time discounting questions women who exhibited a lower discount rate for future relative to current trade offs and hence potentially have a preference for commitment were indeed significantly more likely to open the commitment savings account after twelve months average savings balances increased by 81 percentage points for those clients assigned to the treatment group relative to those assigned to the control group we conclude that the savings response represents a lasting change in savings and not merely a short term response to a new product

uncertain lifetime consumption and dissaving in retirement this paper asks whether the continued accumulation or mild dissaving observed among the retired can be explained by uncertain lifetime in the absence of annuities after an initial period influenced by borrowing constraints under constant relative risk aversion uncertain lifetime depresses consumption by a proportion increasing with age if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is small illustrative computations based on actual income and survival data show that plausible elasticities are sufficiently small to give this effect the reduction in consumption is large enough to explain much of the lack of decumulation by the elderly

how forward looking are consumers further evidence for the united states this paper extends a standard model of consumption to test for the existence of myopic consumers the extended model includes rule of thumb consumers as well as consumers who are assumed to solve a dynamic programming problem the model allows this second set of consumers however to be boundedly rational for a variety of reasons they may be unable to fully account for their future uncertain labor income the model predicts that this inability to correctly value future resources leads to the breakdown of the simple permanent income hypothesis and that consumption responds to predictable changes in income using data for the united states for the period 1951 1990 the paper finds evidence of such myopic behavior

the benefits of emergency reserves greater preference and persistence for goals that have slack with a cost abstractmarketers of programs that are designed to help consumers reach goals face dual challenges of making the program attractive enough to encourage consumer signup while still motivating consumers to reach desirable goals and thus stay satisfied with the program the authors offer a possible solution to this challenge the emergency reserve or slack with a cost they demonstrate how an explicitly defined emergency reserve not only is preferred over other options for goal related programs but can also lead to increased persistence study 1 demonstrates that consumers prefer programs with emergency reserves to programs that do not have them and study 2 further clarifies that consumers preference for an emergency reserve depends on the presence of a superordinate goal study 3 reveals that consumers prefer goals with emergency reserves because they perceive them to have both higher attainability and value than other goals study 4 demonstrates that reserves can lead to increased goal persistence in a

dignity and dreams what the earned income tax credit eitc means to low income families money has meaning that shapes its uses and social significance including the monies low income families draw on for survival wages welfare and the earned income tax credit eitc this study based on in depth interviews with 115 low wage eitc recipients reveals the eitc is an unusual type of government transfer recipients of the eitc say they value the debt relief this government benefit brings however they also perceive it as a just reward for work which legitimizes a temporary increase in consumption furthermore unlike other means tested government transfers the credit is seen as a springboard for upward mobility thus by conferring dignity and spurring dreams the eitc enhances feelings of citizenship and social inclusion

why do retired workers claim their social security benefits so early a potential explanation based on the cumulative prospect theory abstractsocial security provides longevity insurance for older americans according to expected utility theory models rational households who are not liquidity constrained should delay claiming th

stock market wealth and consumption this paper explores the link between changes in the aggregate value of corporate stock and changes in consumer spending it presents data on the distribution of corporate stock ownership based on the 1998 survey of consumer finances it also uses time series evidence on the comovement of stock market wealth and various categories of consumer spending to calibrate the wealth effect it concludes that in the year after a change in stock market values consumer spending is likely to rise by between one and two cents for each dollar increase in the value of corporate stock

understanding overeating and obesity abstract the combination of economic and biological factors is likely to result in overeating in the current environment of cheap and readily available food this propensity is shown using a dual decision approach where choices reflect the interaction of a deliberative system operating as in standard economic models and an affective system that responds rapidly to stimuli without considering long term consequences this framework is characterized by excess food consumption and body weight in that individuals prefer both ex ante and ex post to eat and weigh less than they actually do with weight loss attempts being common but often unsuccessful or only partially successful as in the standard model weight is related to prices however another potentially important reason for rising obesity is that food producers have incentives to engineer products to stimulate the affective system so as to encourage overeating data from several sources are used to investigate predictions of the dual decision model with the evidence providing broad support for at least some irrationality in food consumption most importantly there is little indication that the large secular increases in body mass index have been accompanied by corresponding growth in utility maximizing weight one result is that efforts to reduce weight have become more common as obesity has increased

stock market returns and consumption this paper employs swedish data on households stock holdings to investigate how consumption responds to changes in stock market returns we instrument the actual capital gains and dividend payments with past portfolio weights unrealized capital gains lead to a marginal propensity to consume mpc of 23 percent for the bottom 50 of the wealth distribution and about 3 percent for the top 30 of the wealth distribution households consumption is significantly more responsive to dividend payouts across all parts of the wealth distribution our findings are consistent with households treating capital gains and dividends as separate sources of income