JOHN GATHERGOOD's Outputs (5)

Academic Salaries and Public Evaluation of University Research: Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework (2019)
Journal Article
De Fraja, G., Facchini, G., & Gathergood, J. (2019). Academic Salaries and Public Evaluation of University Research: Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework. Economic Policy, 34(99), 523-583. https://doi.org/10.1093/epolic/eiz009

We study the effects of public evaluation of university research on the pay structures of academic departments. A simple equilibrium model of university pay determination shows how the pay-performance relationship can be explained by the incentives i... Read More about Academic Salaries and Public Evaluation of University Research: Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework.

How do Americans repay their debt?: the balance-matching heuristic (2019)
Journal Article
Gathergood, J., Mahoney, N., Stewart, N., & Weber, J. (2019). How do Americans repay their debt?: the balance-matching heuristic. Economics Bulletin, 39(2), 1458-1466

In Gathergood et al. (forthcoming), we studied credit card repayments using linked data on multiple cards from the United Kingdom. We showed that individuals did not allocate payments to the higher interest rate card, which would minimize the cost of... Read More about How do Americans repay their debt?: the balance-matching heuristic.

The Red, the Black, and the Plastic: Paying Down Credit Card Debt for Hotels, Not Sofas (2019)
Journal Article
Quispe-Torreblanca, E. G., Quispe-Torreblanca, E., Stewart, N., Gathergood, J., & Loewenstein, G. (2019). The Red, the Black, and the Plastic: Paying Down Credit Card Debt for Hotels, Not Sofas. Management Science, 65(11), 5392-5410. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3195

Using transaction data from a sample of 1.8 million credit card accounts, we provide the first field test of a major prediction of Prelec and Loewenstein’s (1998) theory of mental accounting: that consumers will pay off expenditure on transient form... Read More about The Red, the Black, and the Plastic: Paying Down Credit Card Debt for Hotels, Not Sofas.

Consumption changes, not income changes, predict changes in subjective well-being (2019)
Journal Article
Brown, G. D. A., & Gathergood, J. (2019). Consumption changes, not income changes, predict changes in subjective well-being. Social Psychological and Personality Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619835215

Does happiness depend on what one earns or what one spends? Income is typically found to have small beneficial effects on well-being. However, economic theory suggests that well-being is conferred not by income but by consumption (i.e., spending on g... Read More about Consumption changes, not income changes, predict changes in subjective well-being.

How Do Individuals Repay Their Debt? The Balance-Matching Heuristic (2019)
Journal Article
Gathergood, J., Mahoney, N., Stewart, N., & Weber, J. (2019). How Do Individuals Repay Their Debt? The Balance-Matching Heuristic. American Economic Review, 109(3), 844-875. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20180288

We study how individuals repay their debt using linked data on multiple credit cards. Repayments are not allocated to the higher interest rate card, which would minimize the cost of borrowing. Moreover, the degree of misallocation is invariant to the... Read More about How Do Individuals Repay Their Debt? The Balance-Matching Heuristic.