Related papers: Quantity Limits on Addictive Goods
The random utility model (RUM, McFadden and Richter, 1990) has been the standard tool to describe the behavior of a population of decision makers. RUM assumes that decision makers behave as if they maximize a rational preference over a…
Rationality is often related to optimal decision making. Humans are known to be bounded rational agents. However, recent advances in computing, and other scientific and technical fields along with large amount of data have led to a feeling…
Smartphone overuse has many negative effects on human beings. The function App Limits in our phones, which belongs to behavior reinforcement strategies for overcoming problematic smartphone overuse, constrains users by shutting them…
I study the optimal allocation of positional goods in the presence of externalities arising from consumers' concerns about relative consumption. Applications include luxury goods, priority services, education, and organizational…
This paper investigates the consumption and risk taking decision of an economic agent with partial irreversibility of consumption decision by formalizing the theory proposed by Duesenberry (1949). The optimal policies exhibit a type of the…
We study the competing effects of stimulated and spontaneous emission on the information capacity of an amplifying disordered waveguide. At the laser threshold the capacity reaches a "universal" limit, independent of the degree of disorder.…
We consider a model of asexually reproducing individuals. The birth and death rates of the individuals are affected by a fitness parameter. The rate of mutations that cause the fitnesses to change is proportional to the population size, N.…
The opioid crisis remains a critical public health challenge in the United States. Despite national efforts which reduced opioid prescribing rates by nearly 45\% between 2011 and 2021, opioid-related overdose deaths more than tripled during…
A growing proportion of the global population is becoming overweight or obese, leading to various diseases (e.g., diabetes, ischemic heart disease and even cancer) due to unhealthy eating patterns, such as increased intake of food with high…
Point identification of causal effects requires strong assumptions that are unreasonable in many practical settings. However, informative bounds on these effects can often be derived under plausible assumptions. Even when these bounds are…
Why do some national music markets sustain a rich musical diversity whereas others converge on mostly formulaic output? The existing models of cultural consumption (superstar economics, rational addiction, Bayesian social learning) each…
Connectivity - or the lack thereof - is crucial for the function of many man-made systems, from financial and economic networks over epidemic spreading in social networks to technical infrastructure. Often, connections are deliberately…
Neuroeconomic conditions for "rational addiction" (Becker and Murphy, 1988) have been unknown. This paper derived the conditions for "rational addiction" by utilizing a nonlinear time-perception theory of "hyperbolic" discounting, which is…
We introduce a generalization of the concept of sufficientarianism, intended to rank allocations involving multiple consumption goods. In ranking allocations of goods for a fixed society of agents, sufficientarianism posits that allocations…
Every year, 10 million people die from lack of access to treatment for curable diseases, specially in developing countries. Meanwhile, legal but unsafe drugs cause 130 thousand deaths per year. How can this be happening in 21st Century?…
Objective: Ubiquitous internet access is reshaping the way we live, but it is accompanied by unprecedented challenges in preventing chronic diseases that are usually planted by long exposure to unhealthy lifestyles. This paper proposes…
We study a multi-objective model on the allocation of reusable resources under model uncertainty. Heterogeneous customers arrive sequentially according to a latent stochastic process, request for certain amounts of resources, and occupy…
We study the associations between everyday economic decision-making quality and people's emotional states. Using high-frequency, highly disaggregated consumer "scanner" data, we show that the cost of poor decision-making is substantial, on…
A growing body of evidence has shown that incorporating behavioral economics principles into the design of financial incentive programs helps improve their cost-effectiveness, promote individuals' short-term engagement, and increase…
We provide a detailed characterization of the optimal consumption stream for the additive habit-forming utility maximization problem, in a framework of general discrete-time incomplete markets and random endowments. This characterization…