| Neoclassical economics maintains the assumption of a rational decision maker maximizing his utility subject to a budget constraint. Behavioral economics seeks to explain behavior more accurately by using non-standard utility functions, either by introducing non-standard elements of payoffs or non-standard functional forms, or by positing bounded rationality on the part of the decision maker, so that utility may not be maximizes. Each of the papers in this dissertation fills one of these categories. "The Good News-Bad News Effect'" supposes that beliefs, or self-image, enter into an individual's utility function directly, and therefore affect the reaction to and acquisition of new information. "Staying Ahead and Getting Even'" maintains a utility function that is solely a function of monetary rewards, but finds evidence of behavior that is inconsistent with maximization of expected utility of total wealth. Finally, "Hypobolic Discounting and Willingness-to-Wait'" shows individuals responding on a choice task using a heuristic that generates choices intransitivies, and is therefore incompatible with maximization of any utility function. |
