If you have questions about any part of the assignment, or are wondering how to start, just ask!
The first two questions are based on
William Clark and William Lisowski, 2017, Prospect theory and the decision to move or stay, PNAS, E7432-E7440. [Also on Blackboard.]
- Two important elements of prospect theory are (i) loss aversion, and (ii) the endowment effect. The authors claim that both of these influence whether people move home (in Australia). Explain what data they use, and how they support these conclusions. Are the effects statistically significant (refer to Table 4).
- People who have lived longer in their current home are less likely to move. Clark and Lisowski interpret this as the endowment effect at work. What other reasons might explain this apparent inertia?
Now for some more questions. These are based on the video of Joel Sokol talking about his work, at https://lt.org/publication/what-are-costs-lies
- Why does he believe some people tell the truth (even if it may not be in their self-interest)?
- What experiment did he run? What did the experiment show?
- He talks about “partial lies”, which may be contrasted with “full lies”. What does he mean by this?
- One of the topics that interest him is how lying by one person affects lying by others. Suggest three examples where you think this may matter, or where you have observed such effects.
- Oscar Wilde ha argued that lying, or “the telling of beautiful untrue things”, is the proper aim of Art. Do you agree? [A brief answer is fine here; it strays a bit from economics!]
