Does culture shape economic 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 that CEOs’ culturally inherited attitudes towards uncertainty and risk nega...

Overconfident CEOs over-estimate their ability to generate returns. Thus, on the margin, they undertake mergers that destroy value. They also perceive outside finance to be over-priced. We classify CEOs as overconfident when, despite their under-diversification, they hold options on company stock until expiration. We find that these CEOs are more acquisitive on average, particularly via diversi...

Perceptual decisions arise after considering the available sensory evidence [1]. When sensory information is unreliable, a good strategy is to rely on previous experience in similar situations to guide decisions [2-6]. It is well known that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are impaired at value-based decision-making [7-11]. How patients combine past experience and sensory information to m...