This review paper provides an overview of the application of behavioral public economics to energy efficiency. I document policymakers’ arguments for “paternalistic” energy efficiency policies, formalize with a simple model of misoptimizing consumers, review and critique empirical evidence, and suggest future research directions. While empirical results suggest that policies to address imperfec...

We use a money pump argument to measure deviations from the revealed preference axioms. Using a panel data set of food expenditures, we find a large number of violations of the weak axiom of revealed preference. The money pump costs are small, which indicate that the violations of revealed preference are not severe. While most households’ behavior deviates from rationality, by our measure they ...

We conduct a proper test of the claim that people are overcon…dent, in the sense that they believe that they are better than others. The results of the experiment we present do not allow us to reject the hypotheses that the data has been generated by perfectly rational, unbiased, and appropriately con…dent agents. Keywords: Overcon…dence; Better than Average; Experimental Economics; Irrationali...

This paper shows that smoking intensity, i.e. the amount of nicotine extracted per cigarette smoked, responds to changes in excise taxes and tobacco prices. We exploit data covering the period 1988 to 2006 across many US states. Moreover, we provide new evidence on the importance of cotinine measures in explaining long-run smoking behaviour and we investigate the sensitivity of smoking cessatio...

Two econometric issues arise in the structural estimation of consumer or producer demand systems in the presence of many binding non-negativity constraints. First, most existing methods entail the evaluation of multivariate probability integrals. Second, the issue of statistical coherency must be addressed. We circumvent both of these issues using Gibbs Sampling, along with data augmentation an...

Using data from a unique pricing experiment, we test Vickrey’s conjecture that responsive pricing can be used to smooth demand shocks. Our evidence shows that increasing the responsiveness of price to demand conditions reduces the magnitude of deviations in capacity utilization rates from a pre-determined target level. We discuss implications for the use of demand-side incentives to deal with c...

A 67-year-old male presented to our institute with history of paraparesis with decreased sensation and loss of bladder and bowel control. The diagnostic work up revealed an extradural mass at spinal level D7-D12. He had laminectomy and the tumor was sub totally resected. Histological examination revealed non-hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). The patient was worked up for disease anywhere else in the bo...

We present an interesting case of conus medullaris cavernoma that was initially treated as transverse myelitis. Haemorrhagic lumbar puncture led us to perform magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, which showed the presence of a cavernous angioma at the D12-L1 level. The total excision of the lesion was followed by dramatic improvement. We suggest that MR imaging be performed early in all suspected c...

Much progress has been made in recent years in developing and applying a direct measure of utility using survey questions on satisfaction with income and with life in general. In this paper we apply this new type of measurement to the study of money illusion. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1993 to 2003, we cannot reject the hypothesis of no money illusion. JEL Cla...

Recently, the multivariate complex normal distribution has been used to develop a maximum-likelihood probability function for single-wavelength anomalous diffraction phasing and refinement of heavy-atom parameters [Pannu & Read (2004), Acta Cryst. D60, 22-27]. The function accounts explicitly for the correlations between the observed and calculated Friedel mates and their errors. However, the m...