The data in Fehr and Tyran (2001) and Petersen and Winn (2014) show that money illusion plays an important role in nominal price adjustment after a fully anticipated negative monetary shock. Money illusion affects subjects' expectations, and causes pronounced nominal inertia after a negative shock but much less inertia after a positive shock. Thus Petersen and Winn (2014) provide a misleading interpretation of both our and their own data.

Neuroeconomics strives to use knowledge from neuroscience to improve models of decisionmaking. Here we introduce a biologically plausible, drift-diffusion model that is able to jointly predict choice behavior and response times across different choice environments. The model has both normative and positive implications for economics. First, we consistently observe that decisionmakers inefficiently allocate their time to choices for which they are close to indifference. We demonstrate that we can improve subjects' welfare using a simple intervention that puts a time limit on their choices. Second, response times can be used to predict indifference points and the strength of preferences.

Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have long argued that certain decision rights carry not only instrumental value but may also be valuable for their own sake. The ideas of autonomy, freedom, and liberty derive their intuitive appeal—at least partly—from an assumed positive intrinsic value of decision rights. Providing clean evidence for the existence of this intrinsic value and measuring its size, however, is intricate. Here, we develop a method capable of achieving these goals. The data reveal that the large majority of our subjects intrinsically value decision rights beyond their instrumental benefit. The intrinsic valuation of decision rights has potentially important consequences for corporate governance, human resource management, and optimal job design: it may explain why managers value power, why employees appreciate jobs with task discretion, why individuals sort into self-employment, and why the reallocation of decision rights is often very difficult and cumbersome. Our method and results may also prove useful in developing an empirical revealed preference foundation for concepts such as “freedom of choice” and “individual autonomy.”