Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Interpreting Legal Standards Of Proof: An Experimental Study Of Probabilistic Decision-Making, Hayley Leopold

Honors Theses

Legal standards of proof play a central role in structuring decision-making under uncertainty, yet they are typically communicated using qualitative language rather than precise probabilities. This raises an important question: how do individuals interpret and apply these standards when making decisions based on probabilistic evidence? This study examines whether individuals apply legal standards of proof in a manner consistent with their commonly associated probabilistic thresholds, and whether quantification and incentives improve alignment with normative decision-making.

To address these questions, I conducted a controlled behavioral experiment in which participants made legal-style decisions under uncertainty. Participants were assigned roles in a simplified …

Benefits Of Extended Unemployment Insurance On Post-Unemployment Outcomes, Alyssa Roche

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates how unemployment insurance (UI) affects individuals during and after unemployment. Drawing on historical evidence from recent recessions in the United States, publicly available data, behavioral insights, and mathematical modeling, it argues that the benefits of extending UI outweigh the potential costs. The analysis incorporates a wide range of sources, including empirical economic studies using regression models and psychology and business research that highlight behavioral responses to financial stress and job insecurity. By combining quantitative data with behavioral context, the thesis offers a more comprehensive understanding of how extended UI influences job search decisions, wage outcomes, and overall …

Beginner's Luck: The Impact Of Early Wins On Long-Term Gambling Patterns, Jasmine Tan

CMC Senior Theses

The legalization of online sports gambling has rapidly expanded access to gambling platforms, raising concerns about its potential impacts on gambling behavior and addiction. This study investigates whether early wins in online sports gambling predict sustained gambling engagement. Using longitudinal data from 46,339 subscribers to online gambling site bwin Entertainment, we analyzed the gambling activity of new sports bettors over 18 months. Gamblers were categorized based on early outcomes (losses, break-even, small wins, and big wins), and engagement was measured by total bets placed, total gambling days, total stakes after the first three days, and frequency of play. Interaction terms …

Stakeholder Fairness And Corporate Social Impact: The Behavioral Economic Structure Of Corporate Law, Eli Bukspan

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This study aims to bridge the gap between stakeholder capitalism—manifesting today in the evolving corporate social impact paradigm—and the historical shareholder primacy of corporate law. The emerging view of corporate purpose, particularly stakeholder capitalism, is closely related to the notion of fairness. This article demonstrates—by looking mainly at Israeli corporate law—that certain foundational concepts of behavioral economics better describe and justify the recent prominence of stakeholderism and the rejuvenated discourse of corporate social impact and purpose than does neoclassical economic theory. It concludes that the “fairness principle” provides a strong rationale for assimilating stakeholder expectations into the DNA of modern …

Can Aspiration And Financial Literacy Interventions Relieve Internal Constraints? Evidence From Uganda And India, Veronika Divis

Master's Theses

Can aspiration and financial literacy interventions relieve internal constraints? We address this question through a novel experiment in Uganda and India, using 617 participants in 89 already existing borrowing groups of microfinance institutions. We carry out aspiration and financial literacy treatments as well as a combined treatment group which received both treatments to measure effects on aspirations, hope, agency, and pathway indices. Results show that receiving the aspirations treatment led to 0.34, 0.42, 0.18, and 0.40 standard deviation increases in aspirations, agency, pathways, and aspirational hope, respectively. The game and combined treatment groups also showed positive effects but lacked statistical …

What The Stork Brought: Endogenous Fertility Preferences, Lucas Fortier Borden

Master's Theses

Where most existing literature on fertility preferences has described how fertility preferences shape outcomes, this paper provides insight into how the sex of a recent birth affects a mother’s fertility preferences. Utilizing data from the Demographic Health Survey from 1985-2020 in 81 countries containing 309,238 mothers who gave birth in the past 12 months and who have equal to or fewer than three children, I employ OLS with two-way fixed effects as my primary specification, examining the effects of the plausibly exogenous sex of a recent birth on sibship sex composition preferences. Results show that a recent daughter birth increases …

Price Gouging In A Pandemic, Christopher Buccafusco, Daniel Hemel, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic led to acute supply shortages across the country as well as concerns over price increases amid surging demand. In the process, it reawakened a debate about whether and how to regulate “price gouging” — a controversy that continues as inflation has accelerated even as the pandemic abates. Animating this debate is a longstanding conflict between laissez-faire economics, which champions price fluctuations as a means to allocate scarce goods, and perceived norms of consumer fairness, which are thought to cut strongly against sharp price hikes amid shortages.

This Article provides a new, empirically grounded perspective on the price …

Digital Nudging: Potentional And Pitfalls, Avishalom Tor

Journal Articles

From the Article

Digital nudges — that is, significantly behavioral interventions that use software and its user-interface design elements — are an increasingly pervasive feature of online environments that can shape people’s behavior both online (e.g. changing website cookie settings) and offline (e.g. taking a flu vaccine due to a text message reminder). While sharing many characteristics of offline behavioral interventions, digital nudges merit specific attention and analysis due to their growing ubiquity and potential potency, the opacity of their technological and behavioral mechanisms, and the central role of private actors in their implementation.

Incentivizing Innovation: Promoting Technical Competency To Win Future Wars., James E. Bevins

Faculty Publications

Despite numerous studies and initiatives, most current Air Force efforts to add science and technology talent have been insufficient. This begs the question: How does the Air Force incentivize and promote the necessary technical competence required to win future competition, conflicts, and wars? Several key initiatives, grounded in behavioral economics, can incentivize innovation and pursue science and technology expertise. Developed in the context of peer adversaries’ actions; global trends in technology, competition, and conflict; and the global competition for science and technology talent, these recommendations have the potential to reform institutional culture and unleash the creativity and talent of the …

Graduating Greener: Analysis Of A Non-Price Intervention To Encourage Pro-Environmental Behavior Among College Students, Jillie Santos

Honors Theses

According to the Yale Program on Climate Communication, a majority of Americans report worrying about climate change, yet the proportion of Americans who discuss climate change often with friends and family is around half of the worried percentage. This discrepancy illustrates a habit of climate avoidance and climate inaction. Drawing upon psychology and human-centered design, I assisted Dr. Michael A. Smyer in developing Graduating Greener, a workshop aimed at disrupting climate avoidance and promoting pro-environmental behavior through a sequence of social, environmentally-based activities. In this thesis, I investigate concepts from the field of behavioral economics which inform and align with …

The Effects Of Cost, Level Of Safety, And Severity Of Injury On Manager Decisions To Implement A Safety Solution, Jonathan M. Hochmuth

Dissertations

Workplace injuries continue to be a source of substantial human and financial costs each year. Behavioral safety processes have been effective in reducing workplace injuries by increasing safety-related behaviors. In recent years, the focus in behavioral safety has shifted towards the role of managers in establishing and maintaining safe behaviors and conditions in the workplace. Understanding how managers make decisions to allocate resources is critical to improving safety. The field of behavioral economics has developed methods for studying decision-making. While there have been calls to apply these methods to occupational safety, there are only two empirical studies which have done …

Analysis Of Demand Under Time And Quantity Restriction Frames, Haily K. Traxler

Dissertations

For decades, behavioral economists and behavior analysts have borrowed techniques from one another to investigate human decision making. While there has been little overlap in their work, the union of the two may help to answer important questions about behavior. An emerging behavioral economic topic of interest in the behavior analytic literature is the analysis of how framing affects demand. The purpose of the present studies is to investigate some conditions under which demand is affected by framing and provide a behavior analytic interpretation of those effects. To assess the effects of framing, demand for marketplace items was assessed under …

Caregiver Treatment Consumption In An Experimental Treatment Marketplace, Delaney J. Darragh

Faculty Publications

Behavioral economics is an approach to understanding consumer behavior by integrating behavioral science with economic principles. Behavioral economics incorporates traditional economic principles with operant learning approaches. There is limited research examining how individuals consume psychological and behavioral treatments. This is especially the case for treatments designed for children. The current study used data from a previously collected sample to explore gender differences in an experimental treatment marketplace (ETM). Experimental treatment marketplaces are generally used to evaluate choices between goods and services (e.g., types of behavior interventions). An ETM was developed to evaluate treatment consumption when levels of evidence differed between …

The Evolution Of Technology, Kelly Cooper

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

As per outlined by Dr. Quinn, this literature review will be a comprehensive review paper including an overview of current and previous research done in the field of Memetics. This will further include sifting through literature to hone in on a specific, new area of memetics Dr. Weeks is focused on, the evolutionary change of abiotic factors through purchasing. This is to be completed with the help of the library worshops designed to teach the skills necessary to undergo a literature review of this size. I will also participate in weekly reading groups to discuss papers and work closely with …

Predictors Of Social Distancing And Mask-Wearing Behavior: Panel Survey In Seven U.S. States, Plamen Nikolov, Andreas Pape, Ozlem Tonguc, Charlotte Williams

Economics Faculty Scholarship

This paper presents preliminary summary results from a longitudinal study of participants in seven U.S. states during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to standard socio-economic characteristics, we collect data on various economic preference parameters: time, risk, and social preferences, and risk perception biases. We pay special attention to predictors that are both important drivers of social distancing and are potentially malleable and susceptible to policy levers. We note three important findings: (1) demographic characteristics exert the largest influence on social distancing measures and mask-wearing, (2) we show that individual risk perception and cognitive biases exert a critical role in influencing …

Clusters In The Wilderness: A Theory Of The Economic And Policy Implications Of Location-Based Passions, Jack Marr

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In the global war for talent and investment, local policymakers are at a seeming disadvantage particularly in smaller cities as talent and capital are mobile while local policies are not. This often results in wasteful “copy thy neighbor” “race-to-the-bottom” in local policies. In these three essays, I develop a theory of Location-Based Passions (LBPs) and show that individual job seekers will accept lower salaries and benefits to be close to what they love, that there are long-term economic benefits in terms of greater per capita income and higher housing values to being recognized as an LBP star city, and look …

Competition And Cooperation In Polygynous & Monogamous Households: Experimental Evidence From Sierra Leone, Bethany Gerdemann

Master's Theses

Competition and cooperation in polygynous households have both been widely documented across various disciplines. There is contradictory evidence as to whether these interpersonal dynamics produce better or worse outcomes for the household. This study uses a competitiveness game and a series of dictator games to measure competition and cooperation within households and between marriage types. Results show that there are key differences between monogamy and polygyny. Monogamous women compete less with their husbands than stranger and less in comparison to polygynous women. Monogamous spouses are more likely to forgo economic opportunities than polygynous spouses and have a greater preference for …

How Deep Is Your Love? Loss Aversion In Dating Markets, Genevieve B. Gregorich

Undergraduate Economic Review

This study uses experimental evidence to examine the existence of loss aversion in the dating market. Applying a valuation gap experiment, this study finds that people are loss averse when it comes to dating opportunities, meaning people weigh the loss of a dating opportunity more heavily than an equivalent gain. The results also support the hypothesis that people experience more loss aversion when they have fewer dating opportunities available. This finding provides preliminary evidence that the existence and growing prevalence of online dating, which dramatically increases peoples’ access to dating opportunities, reduces loss aversion, therefore increasing turnover in the market.

Development Of A Translational Model Of Co-Use Of Alcohol And Nicotine For Testing Potential Pharmacotherapies, Sarah Elizabeth Maggio

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Co-users of alcohol and nicotine are the largest group of polysubstance users worldwide. Although pharmacotherapies are available for alcohol (EtOH) or tobacco use disorders individually, it may be possible to develop a single pharmacotherapy to treat heavy drinking tobacco smokers through capitalizing on the commonalities in their mechanisms of action. Towards this goal, several models of concurrent access to EtOH and nicotine were explored as potential preclinical models of co-use using female alcohol-preferring (P) rats. Additionally, potential pharmacotherapeutics for the treatment of EtOH and nicotine co-use disorder were tested using different variations of our model. Treatments tested included (1) varenicline, …

Don’T Worry Be Happy: Analysis Of Happiness As An Economic Measurement, Kofi Boadu

Master's Theses

Everyone wants to be happy. Happiness however never seems to be a national goal. A possible answer is that happiness is subjective and on its own may not be reflective of the economic status of a country. Therefore, should people’s happiness should be treated equally with other traditional economic measurements? This cross-country level study looks at the relationship between happiness and traditional economic measurements; mainly GDP per capita. Questions concerning whether GDP per capita indeed captures the overall well-being of a citizen and happiness’ eligibility as an economic measurement are addressed. Findings confirm that happiness and GDP per capita are …

Efficacy Of Technology-Based And In-Person Health Education For Behavior Change In College-Aged Women, Madeline Bremel

All College Thesis Program, 2016-2019

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether an in-person or technology based bone health intervention improved bone health knowledge and behaviors in college-aged women. Methods: 30 college-aged women were randomly divided into three groups: personal intervention (n = 10), technological intervention (n = 10), and control (n = 10). Both intervention groups received identical information regarding the importance of bone health and the appropriate behaviors for maintaining strong bones including weight-bearing exercise, calcium consumption, and vitamin D consumption. The technology group received the information via an online video, and the personal group via a one-on-one …

Time Delay And Investment Decisions: Evidence From An Experiment In Tanzania, Plamen Nikolov

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Attitudes toward risk underlie virtually every important economic decision an individual makes. In this experimental study, I examine how introducing a time delay into the execution of an investment plan influences individuals’ risk preferences. The field experiment proceeded in three stages: a decision stage, an execution stage and a payout stage. At the outset, in the Decision Stage (Stage 1), each subject was asked to make an investment plan by splitting a monetary investment amount between a risky asset and a safe asset. Subjects were informed that the investment plans they made in the Decision Stage are binding and will …

Sacrifice, Benefit, And Reciprocity: Evidence From A Trust Game, Mirco Dinelli

Honors Theses

Social preferences have generated much interest in recent economic literature. While reciprocity has been closely examined by several economists using gift exchange and other games, much of their focus is on the effect of intentions and motivations. Instead, I focus on two strictly outcome-based factors in the context of a trust game: sacrifice made by the giver and benefit received by the recipient. I attempt to isolate these influences by varying the multiplier across variations of the trust game to create comparison groups that differ in one of these factors, but not both. Unable to control for all expected sources …

Cooperation And Reciprocity In Anonymous Interactions: Other-Regarding Preferences And Quasi-Magical Thinking, Gregory Klevans

Theses and Dissertations

In economic experiments, players often demonstrate concerns for the relative payoffs between themselves and other subjects, in addition to their own payoffs. In addition, they appear to do their parts to achieve efficient outcomes, particularly when they are ignorant of the opponent's decision. I present a parsimonious model of other-regarding preferences and quasi-magical thinking that explains such behavior, and I apply it to four games: the prisoner's dilemma, the traveler's dilemma, the ultimatum game, and the trust game.

In Defense Of The Self-Help Book, Owen Barrott

Marriott Student Review

"In Defense of the Self-Help Book" explores the relationship between behavioral economics and the effects that self-help and management books have. It explores loss aversion and the optimism bias paradox and applies it to those who use success literature to improve their own abilities.

Nudging Towards Social Change: The Application Of Psychology And Behavioral Economics In Promoting Responsible Consumption, Larissa Chern

CMC Senior Theses

With workplace disasters in developing countries increasingly in the news, a major question is how to encourage consumers to use corporate social responsibility as a criterion in purchasing. Distinct from environmental concerns, social responsibility is defined here with respect to the humanitarian aspects of corporate practice, including fair wages and working conditions, equitable treatment of the disadvantaged, and restriction of child labor. Although the idea of socially responsible consumption (SRC) was first identified over forty years ago, most recent research on changing consumption habits focuses specifically on environmentally responsible consumption (ERC). Combining the psychological concept of social norms with economic …

How Should We Motivate Effort, Shamima Khan

Theses and Dissertations

This research uses an experimental design to study if the pattern and positioning of rewards influence the amount of effort participants put in. The three key hypotheses tested here are: 1) are people more likely to complete a task if the incentives are given in more regular intervals, 2) do uncertainty of reward timing hurt or help in maintaining motivation, 3) is intrinsic motivation more influential than the patterns in which incentives are structured? The treatments in this experiment are created by varying the reward structure of candies and pens in exchange of a simple math test completion. Among the …

Anchoring In Financial Decision-Making: Evidence From The Field, Michael Jetter, Jay K. Walker

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes 12,596 wagering decisions of 6,064 contestants in the US game show Jeopardy!, focusing on the anchoring phenomenon in financial decision-making. We find that contestants anchor heavily on the initial dollar value of a clue in their wagering decision, even though there exists no rational reason to do so. More than half of all wagers occur within $500 of the initial dollar value, although the maximum possible wagering value averages $5,914. This anchoring phenomenon remains statistically significant on the one percent level, even after controlling for scores, clue category, time trends, and player-fixed effects.When exploiting within-player variation …

Mandatory Process, Matthew J.B. Lawrence

Indiana Law Journal

This Article suggests that people tend to undervalue their procedural rights—their proverbial “day in court”—until they are actually involved in a dispute. The Article argues that the inherent, outcome-independent value of participating in a dispute resolution process comes largely from its power to soothe a person’s grievance— their perception of unfairness and accompanying negative emotional reaction—win or lose. But a tendency to assume unchanging emotional states, known in behavioral economics as projection bias, can prevent people from anticipating that they might become aggrieved and from appreciating the grievance-soothing power of process. When this happens, people will waive their procedural rights …

Mandatory Process, Matthew B. Lawrence

Faculty Articles

This Article suggests that people tend to undervalue their procedural rights—their proverbial “day in court”—until they are actually involved in a dispute. The Article argues that the inherent, outcome-independent value of participating in a dispute resolution process comes largely from its power to soothe a person’s grievance— their perception of unfairness and accompanying negative emotional reaction—win or lose. But a tendency to assume unchanging emotional states, known in behavioral economics as projection bias, can prevent people from anticipating that they might become aggrieved and from appreciating the grievance-soothing power of process. When this happens, people will waive their procedural rights …