We conduct a natural field experiment with over 200 customers at a grocery store to investigate dynamic inconsistency and the demand for commitment in food choice. Subjects are invited to allocate and re-allocate food items received as part of a grocery delivery program. We observe substantial dynamic inconsistency, as well as a demand for commitment among a non-negligible number of subjects. I...

This paper presents the partial analytical solution to a model of periodic consumption that incorporates imperfect capital markets and uncertainty. Our model assumes that consumption decisions occur more frequently than income receipt. We show that the week specific consumption functions can be ordered. At low levels of wealth these functions exhibit a “ushaped” pattern between income receipts....

Theories of expectations-based reference-dependent preferences have provided a critical modeling innovation, incorporating a structured theory of the formation of reference points. An important prediction of thesemodels is a monotone response in behavior to changes in expectations. To test such models we conduct a real-effort experiment manipulating expectations and examining consequences on ef...

Sporeformers isolated from a commercially canned food were identified as Bacillus cereus, lactose-positive variants. The thermal resistance of spore crops produced from each of two representative cultures was determined in 0.067 M phosphate buffer at pH 7.0. The D12,A, values for one isolate were approximately 0.03 min (z = 9.9 C), whereas the D121.1 values for the other isolate were 2.35 min (...

Taxes, Cigarette Consumption, and Smoking Intensity: Reply 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 behav...

Using data from a unique pricing experiment, we investigate Vickrey’s conjecture that responsive pricing can be used to smooth both predictable and unpredictable 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. A 10 percent increase in price var...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of a wage increase on Qat consumption for the Djiboutian mail household head using a static framework. In particular, by using a system of simultaneous of equations with Qat consumption and Wage as endogenous variables, the paper estimates whether a wage increase will affect Qat consumption. Our findings suggest that the impact of wage on Qat cons...

We derive an upper bound on the action of a direct product of two quantum maps (channels) acting on multi-partite quantum states. We assume that the individual channels Λj affect single-particle states so, that for an arbitrary input ρj , the distance Dj(Λj [ρj ], ρj) between the input ρj and the output Λj[ρj ] of the channel is less than ǫ. Given this assumption we show that for an arbitrary s...

The economics of happiness is applied to further the understanding of important consumption decisions in which limited willpower is often argued to lead to suboptimal choices. Based on individuals’ judgments of the quality of their lives, it is, in principle, possible to derive whether some observed behavior is suboptimal and is therefore reducing a person’s welfare. We discuss the key characte...