Donors may often not be sure whether a recipient really deserves their help. Does this uncertainty deter generosity? In an experiment we find that, to the contrary, under most specifications of uncertainty, dictators give more, compared with the donation the same dictator makes to a recipient they know to have the expected value of the endowment with certainty. They are particularly concerned a...

This paper describes a pure-exchange, continuous-time economy with two heterogeneous agents and complete markets. A novel feature of the economy is that agents perceive some security returns as ambiguous in the sense often attributed to Frank Knight. The equilibrium is described completely in closed-form. After identifying agents as countries, the model is applied to address the consumption hom...

Ghirardato, Maccheroni, and Marinacci (2004) propose a method for distinguishing between perceived ambiguity and the decision-maker’s reaction to it. They study a general class of preferences which they dub invariant biseparable. This class includes CEU and MEU. This note presents some examples which illustrate their results. Keywords, Ambiguity, multiple priors, invariant biseparable preferenc...

In this paper we survey recent works on rational inattention (RI) in macroeconomics within the dynamic linear-quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) setting. We first discuss how RI affects consumption smoothness and sensitivity, precautionary savings, asset pricing, portfolio choice, and aggregate fluctuations in the univariate case. We then discuss the applications of RI to macroeconomic models of permanen...

Ambiguity preferences are important to explain human decision-making in many areas in economics and finance. To measure individual ambiguity preferences, the experimental economics literature advocates using incentivized laboratory experiments. Yet, laboratory experiments are costly and require a lot of time and administrative effort. This study develops an ambiguity preference survey module th...

Tobin (1958) has argued that in the face of potential capital losses on bonds it is reasonable to hold cash as a means to transfer wealth over time. It is shown that this assertion cannot be sustained taking into account the evolution of wealth of cash holders versus non cash holders. Cash holders will be driven out of the market in the long run by traders who only use a (risky) long-lived asse...

This paper studies the dynamics of durable and nondurable consumption under two alternative assumptions about information updating by households — rational inattention and sticky expectations. We find that sticky expectations due to a fixed cost does a better job of reproducing the infrequent adjustments at the individual level and the slow adjustments at the aggregate level. We then show that ...

We show how optimal saving in a two-period model is affected when prudence and risk aversion of the underlying utility function change. Increasing prudence alone will induce higher savings only if, for certain combinations of the interest rate and the pure time discount rate, there is distributional neutrality between the two periods. Otherwise, changes of risk aversion that affect the distribu...

We show the incompatibility between the existence of stationary subgame perfect equilibria in Shaked’s game of cycling offers with exogenous breakdown and the behavior of players consistent with the Allais Paradox. Thus, the strategic support of the equally marginally bold solution presented in Burgos, Grant, and Kajii [2002. Games Econ. Behav. 38, 28–51] does not go beyond the two-person case....

Tobin (1958) has argued that in the face of potential capital losses on bonds it is reasonable to hold cash as a means to transfer wealth over time. It is shown that this assertion cannot be sustained taking into account the evolution of wealth of cash holders versus non cash holders. Cash holders will be driven out of the market in the long run by traders who only use a (risky) long-lived asse...