Little is known about whether people make good choices when facing important decisions. This article reports on a large-scale randomized field experiment in which research subjects having difficulty making a decision flipped a coin to help determine their choice. For important decisions (e.g. quitting a job or ending a relationship), individuals who are told by the coin toss to make a change are more likely to make a change, more satisfied with their decisions, and happier six months later than those whose coin toss instructed maintaining the status quo. This finding suggests that people may be excessively cautious when facing life-changing choices.

I study the aggregate effects of labour market frictions in a small open economy where firms grow slowly and make fixed export investments. The model features interactions between dynamic investments in exporting and search frictions with job-to-job mobility. A calibration to Argentina’s economy matching data on firm growth, worker transitions between firms, and export dynamics suggests that the real income gains from lowering frictions in job-to-job transitions are about seven times larger than comparable reductions in frictions from unemployment. Barriers to worker mobility across firms matter for the real income gains of trade-cost reductions.

The effect that the entry of additional firms has on consumer welfare and efficiency in a simple equilibrium-search model is considered. Special attention is given to the case where an arbitrageur enters. It is shown that entry can increase the monopoly power of firms and so reduce welfare. In particular, arbitrage always makes consumers worse off and can increase price dispersion and reduce efficiency in the market. The source of the results is that, unlike other forms of product differentiation, the amount of monopoly power that firms have in a search model is determined endogenously by consumers.

This article offers a new method of solution for linear difference equations with Rational Expectations. We provide a description of the complete set of solutions which is shown to depend on arbitrary martingales. We thus avoid the use of "differences of martingales" as introduced by Gourieroux, Broze, Szafarz, while describing the general solution as a dynamic equation with lower order. At the same time we provide a simple algorithm, based on polynomial divisions, to calculate some basic solutions, namely all ARMA solutions.

It is demonstrated that the risk premia on stock in an overlapping generations model with risk-averse agents are bounded above zero.

Journal Article Economics of Depletable Resources and Price Ceiling Induced Bias Get access Dwight R. Lee Dwight R. Lee Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 47, Issue 5, October 1980, Pages 999–1002, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296929 Published: 01 October 1980 Article history Received: 01 May 1979 Accepted: 01 April 1980 Published: 01 October 1980

Journal Article The Aggregate Excess Demand Correspondence and the Structure of Economies with Externalities Get access D. T. Scheffman D. T. Scheffman University of Western Ontario Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 42, Issue 4, October 1975, Pages 597–604, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296796 Published: 01 October 1975

Journal Article A Probabilistic Model of Social Choice Get access Michael D. Intriligator Michael D. Intriligator University of California, Los Angeles Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 40, Issue 4, October 1973, Pages 553–560, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296588 Published: 01 October 1973

Journal Article The Stability of Kaldor's 1957 Model Get access D. G. Champernowne D. G. Champernowne Trinity College, Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 38, Issue 1, January 1971, Pages 47–62, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296622 Published: 01 January 1971

Journal Article The Invariably Stable Cobweb Model Get access R. D. Auster R. D. Auster The City College of the City University of New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 38, Issue 1, January 1971, Pages 117–121, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296630 Published: 01 January 1971