Given positive integers d and n, there is an integer N such that for every injective map ffrom { 1 ..... N} a into R there is a subset A = A1 x A2 x ... × Ad of { 1 ..... N} a such that (1) each Aj has n elements, (2) the restriction of f to A is monotone in each coordinate, (3) there is an ordering of the coordinates such that f on A is texicographic with respect to that ordering. Because inje...

The literature on social preferences provides overwhelming evidence of departures from pure self-interest of individuals. Experiments show that people care about others’ well-being and their relative standing. This paper investigates whether this type of behavior persists when risk comes into play. I devise an experiment which sheds light on the interrelation of risk and social preferences by m...

Does culture shape risk preferences? While economic models of the origins of preferences point to an important role of culture, supporting empirical evidence is largely missing for risk and time preferences. In this study, we exploit variation in cultural heritage across CEOs of public U.S. companies and demonstrate an important effect of CEOs’ culturally transmitted risk preferences on corpora...

People choose differently when facing potential gains than when facing potential losses. Clear gross differences in decision making between gains and losses have been empirically demonstrated in numerous studies (e.g., framing effect, risk preference, loss aversion). However, theories maintain that there are strong underlying connections (e.g., reflection effect). We investigated the relationsh...

The finding that the preferences of middle-income Americans are ignored when they diverge from the preferences of the rich is one of the most widely accepted and influential conclusions in political science research today. I offer a cautionary note regarding this conclusion. I demonstrate that even on those issues for which the preferences of the wealthy and those in the middle diverge, policy ...

Empirical studies of the connection between citizen preferences and legislator actions have largely focused on the preferences of a district’s average or median voter. While many theories suggest that preference heterogeneity should also affect this connection, few empirical analyses have rigorously tested claims about the distribution of individual voter preferences. In this paper, we use a un...

We present a simple and natural non-pricing mechanism for allocating divisible goods among strategic agents having lexicographic preferences. Our mechanism has favorable properties of strategy-proofness (incentive compatibility). In addition (and even when extended to the case of Leontief bundles) it enjoys Pareto efficiency, envy-freeness, and time efficiency. 1998 ACM Subject Classification F...