Using paper and pencil experiments administered in senior centers, we examine decision-making performance in multi-attribute decision problems. We differentiate the effects of declining cognitive performance and changing cognitive process on decision-making performance of seniors as they age. We find a significant decline in performance with age due to reduced reliance on common heuristics and increased ...
Abstract: This paper formally derives and tests hypotheses on how exogenous events impact the career advancement of British diplomats. On the basis of a novel panel dataset spanning 40 years (1966-2005) of 342 British diplomats' career progression, it tests the prediction that the occurrence of major natural disasters and incidents of unanticipated armed conflict outbreak in diplomats' host...
This project entails two parts. The first part is entitled “Auctioning Identity Data: Experimental Evidence” and presents an experimental reverse Vickrey auction of personal type information that allows social comparisons. In this auction, it is analyzed how information sensitivity influences price-setting behavior of bidders. The result shows that negative sensitivity increases ask prices for...
This paper estimates the effect of involuntary job loss on smoking behavior and body weight using German Socio-Economic Panel Study data. Baseline nonsmokers are more likely to start smoking due to job loss, while smokers do not intensify their smoking. Job loss increases body weight slightly, but significantly. In particular, single individuals as well as those with lower health or socioeconomic status ...
We are happy to announce that on April 23rd and 24th, Joseph Altonji will hold three lectures and one research talk as part of the 2012 Lecture Series of the Berlin Network of Labour Market Research (BeNA). Dates and Time 10-12am2-4pmMonday, April 23first lecturesecond lecture Tuesday, April 24third lectureResearch talkThe lectures and the research talk will be given in English, are free of...
Given the growing dissatisfaction with exclusion and long-run restrictions in structural vector autoregressive analysis, sign restrictions are becoming increasingly popular. So far there are no techniques for validating the shocks identified via such restrictions. Although in an ideal setting the sign restrictions specify shocks of interest, sign restrictions may be invalidated by measurement errors, ...
