Tom Sawyer and the construction of value

Dan Ariely, George Loewenstein () and Drazen Prelec

No 05-10, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Abstract: This paper challenges the common assumption that economic agents know their tastes. After reviewing previous research showing that valuation of ordinary products and experiences can be manipulated by non-normative cues, we present three studies showing that in some cases people do not even have a pre-existing sense of whether an experience is good or bad – even when they have experienced a sample of it.

Keywords: Microeconomics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-pke
Date: Written 2005
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