Search

We study the effect of financial resources on decision-making. Low-income US households are randomly assigned to receive an online survey before or after payday. The survey collects measures of cognitive function and administers risk and intertemporal choice tasks. The study design generates variation in cash, checking and savings balances, and expenditures. Before-payday participants behave as if they are more present-biased when making intertemporal choices about monetary rewards but not when making intertemporal choices about nonmonetary real-effort tasks. Nor do we find before-after differences in risk-taking, the quality of decision-making, the performance in cognitive function tasks, or in heuristic judgments. (JEL C83, D14, D81, D91, I32) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the rapid pace of deployment of cost-effective renewable energy projects in Europe and China, it is clear that the United States will eventually make the transition from an electrical power generation model-that predominantly relies on environmentally and economically unsustainable fossil fuel and nuclear technologies to generate the vast majority of its electrical power-to a new one that utilizes, to the greatest extent possible, renewable sources of energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study popular attitudes in Germany, Spain, the Philippines, and the United States toward three controversial markets-prostitution, surrogacy, and global kidney exchange (GKE). Of those markets, only prostitution is banned in the United States and the Philippines, and only prostitution is allowed in Germany and Spain. Unlike prostitution, majorities support legalization of surrogacy and GKE in all four countries. So, there is not a simple relation between public support for markets, or bans, and their legal and regulatory status. Because both markets and bans on markets require social support to work well, this sheds light on the prospects for effective regulation of controversial markets., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest., (Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)