There is evidence that noradrenergic coeruleo-cortical projections are involved in different forms of cognitive flexibility. So far, no studies in humans have investigated the involvement of beta receptors on task-switching performance, a well-established measure of cognitive flexibility. The present study investigated whether the administration of propranolol (a central and peripheral beta-adr...

In the task-switching paradigm, mixing costs indicate the performance costs to mix two different tasks, while switch costs indicate the performance costs to switch between two sequentially presented tasks. Applying tasks with bivalent stimuli and responses, many studies demonstrated substantial mixing and switch costs and a reduction of these costs as a result of practice. The present study inv...

The conventional wisdom is that switching costs raise prices and make markets less competitive. Dube, Hitsch and Rossi (2009, hereafter DHR) demonstrate a U shaped relationship between switching costs and equilibrium average prices; i.e., prices fall at low levels of switching costs and then rise as switching costs become very high. DHR show this result using a numerical solution of an infinite...

I estimate demand for auto insurance in the presence of two types of market frictions: search and switching costs. I develop an integrated utility-maximizing model in which consumers decide over which and how many companies to search and from which company to purchase. My modelling approach rationalizes observed consideration sets as being the outcomes of consumers’ search processes. I find sea...

Executive control involves concentrating on one task without losing the ability to switch to a second task at will. We studied this ability in monkeys (Macaca mulatta) performing arbitrary stimulus-response mappings in a task-switching paradigm. We found relatively low switch costs but high task interference costs. This is the reverse of the typical human pattern of relatively large switch cost...