WP 2021

WP 2021-07 Economics is converging with sociology but not with psychology

Posted On August 4, 2021
Categories Working Papers, WP 2021

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AUTHOR: Don Ross

ABSTRACT: The rise of behavioral economics since the 1980s led to richer mutual influence between economic and psychological theory and experimentation. However, as behavioral economics has become increasingly integrated into the main stream in economics, and as psychology has remained damagingly methodologically conservative, this convergence has recently… more »

WP 2021-06 Willingness to pay for private and public improvements of vulnerable road users’ safety

Posted On July 9, 2021
Categories Working Papers, WP 2021

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AUTHORS: Linda Andersson Järnberg, Daniela Andrén, Lars Hultkrantz, E. Elisabet Rutström and Elin Vimefall

ABSTRACT: A frequent finding in the empirical literature on cost-benefit analysis of traffic safety measures is that valuations of public goods are lower than valuations of private goods, contrary to theory predictions. This study elicits the willingness… more »

WP 2021-05 Modeling Norm-Governed Communities with Conditional Games: Sociological Game-Determination and Economic Equilibria

Posted On June 16, 2021
Categories Working Papers, WP 2021

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AUTHORS: Don Ross, Wynn C. Stirling and Luca Tummolini

ABSTRACT: Most social scientists agree that informal norms constrain available equilibria in most human interactions. However, they do not agree on how to model them: economists often make them derivative of individual preferences, while a broader tradition in social theory understands them… more »

WP 2021-04 Neo-Samuelsonian Methodology, Normative Economics, and the Quantitative Intentional Stance

Posted On June 14, 2021
Categories Working Papers, WP 2021

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AUTHORS: Don Ross

ABSTRACT: Wade Hands (2013) critically consolidated a new and growing approach to revealed preference interpretations and methods, which he called “Contemporary Revealed Preference Theory” (CRPT). He recognised that CRPT is folded into a more comprehensive philosophy of economics due to Don Ross, which Ross dubs “Neo-Samuelsonian Philosophy of… more »

WP 2021-03 Crowded Out: Heterogeneity in Risk Attitudes Among Poor Households in the US

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Forthcoming, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty

AUTHORS: Arianna Galliera and E. Elisabet Rutström

ABSTRACT: Not much is known about the heterogeneity of risk attitudes among poor households in rich countries. This paper provides estimates from a unique data set collected among the urban poor in Atlanta,… more »

WP 2021-02 Give Me a Challenge or Give Me a Raise

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Published in 2021 in Experimental Economics.

AUTHORS: Aleksandr Alekseev

ABSTRACT: I study the effect of task difficulty on workers’ effort. I find that task difficulty has an inverse-U effect on effort and that this effect is quantitatively large, especially when compared to the effect of conditional monetary rewards. Difficulty acts as… more »

WP 2021-01 Gender, Confidence, and the Mismeasure of Intelligence, Competitiveness and Literacy

Posted On January 11, 2021
Categories Working Papers, WP 2021

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AUTHORS: Glenn W. Harrison, Don Ross and J. Todd Swarthout

ABSTRACT: The measurement of intelligence should identify and measure an individual’s subjective confidence that a response to a test question is correct. Existing measures that use multiple-choice answers are constrained in measuring responses that reflect, at best, only modal beliefs, due… more »