Heuristics and Biases in Thinking About Tax

Written by: Edward J. McCaffery(#) and Jonathan Baron (t) Abstract The principal findings of behavioral economics and cognitive psychology over the past several decades have been to show that human beings deviate from ideal precepts of rationality in many settings, showing inconsistent judgment in the face of framing and other formal manipulations of the presentation of problems. This paper summarizes the findings of original experiments about subjects’ perceptions of various…