Eyal Lahav | The Open University of Israel (original) (raw)

Papers by Eyal Lahav

The European Journal of Health Economics, Mar 8, 2022

Achieving high vaccination rates is important for overcoming an epidemic. This study investigates... more Achieving high vaccination rates is important for overcoming an epidemic. This study investigates the association between religious faith and intentions to become vaccinated against COVID-19 in Israel and Japan. Most of Israel's population is monotheistic, whereas most Japanese are unaffiliated with any religion. Therefore, our findings might be applicable to various countries that differ in their religions and levels of religiosity. We conducted almost identical large-scale surveys four times in Israel and five times in Japan from March to June 2020 to obtain panel data. We found that intentions of getting vaccinated depend on people's level of religiosity in a non-linear way. Those who have strong religious beliefs are less likely to become vaccinated than those who say they are less religious. Two other factors that play a role in this relationship are religious denomination in Israel and identifying with a religion in Japan.

Young, Mar 16, 2018

In the last 20 years, adolescents have gradually become very important clients for the banking in... more In the last 20 years, adolescents have gradually become very important clients for the banking industry. The current study investigates, using data collected in a survey, whether adolescents offered two options for investing in a saving certificate choose the financially preferable one and whether this choice is related to their time preference, after controlling for gender and bank account ownership. The participants were 270 adolescents from public high schools in Israel. The findings indicate that approximately 40 per cent made the inferior financial decision. However, those with a bank account were less likely to decide poorly, possibly indicating that having an account reduces financial illiteracy. Moreover, selecting the financially inferior choice correlates with a higher subjective discount rate (higher present-orientation). A gender effect is also found; girls have higher subjective discount rates, and this effect is stronger for girls with a bank account. Policy implications regarding financial education programmes are discussed.

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2014

ABSTRACT This study examines the factors that affect an individual's decision to take an ... more ABSTRACT This study examines the factors that affect an individual's decision to take an active part in social justice protests. We use data collected after the 2011 Israeli social justice protests against the continuing rise in the cost of living, the social order and power-structure in Israel. Our main hypotheses are based on the expressive behavior model, and suggest that active participation in protests produces expressive utility that changes the cost-benefit calculation in the decision to be active in social protests. The results show that individuals who decided to participate actively in the non-violent protest had low general confidence in the future of the Israeli society. The findings also suggest that active participants are less present-oriented, less risk averse, and have a higher interest in politics, compared to those who did not participate actively. In addition, the more active participants tend to live in rented homes, meaning that their self-interest in housing-related issues is high. Finally, we find that women and those who support a non-aggressive military policy were more likely to participate in protests. These results shed light on behavioral and sociological factors affecting the decision to protest, specifically in Israeli society.

American Journal of Health Behavior, 2021

Objective: The current study uses the unique setting created by the coronavirus crisis in China d... more Objective: The current study uses the unique setting created by the coronavirus crisis in China during the peak period of the pandemic to examine the behavioral factors affecting the decision of the Chinese people to adopt the precautionary actions recommended by the government. Methods: Using the social app WeChat, we conducted a cross sectional study of the Chinese people in mid-February 2020. Results: Our results show that higher levels of dispositional optimism and support for the government's actions for managing the epidemic were positively correlated with the compliance level. In addition, women and married participants were more likely to comply with the recommendations. Conclusions: Optimism and support for government actions should be considered when promoting policies related to health behavior such as social distancing.

Judgment and Decision Making, 2011

The current field study compares the time preferences of young adults of similar ages but in two ... more The current field study compares the time preferences of young adults of similar ages but in two very different environments, one more dangerous and uncertain than the other. Soldiers, college students and a control group of teenagers answered questionnaires about their time preferences. During mandatory service, soldiers live in a violent atmosphere where they face great uncertainty about the near future and high risk of mortality (measured by probability of survival). University students and teenagers live in much calmer environment and are tested for performance only periodically. The soldier-subjects show relatively high subjective discount rates when compared to the other two groups. We suggest that the higher subjective discount rate among soldiers can be the result of high perceived risk in the army as an institution, or higher mortality risk.

Economics Bulletin, 2015

Financial illiteracy is a well-known, international problem. The current study investigates if le... more Financial illiteracy is a well-known, international problem. The current study investigates if learning basic fundamentals of cash flow capitalization affects time preference. The findings indicate that this knowledge does dramatically decrease preference for the present.

Research Papers in Economics, 2015

Corporate bond markets may suffer from investors' lack of competence in screening out low-quality... more Corporate bond markets may suffer from investors' lack of competence in screening out low-quality issuers. We use data from the Israeli capital market in 1999-2009 to investigate the quality of corporate bond issuers and the role of the institutional investors in the screening process in the corporate bond market. The findings suggest that higher quality firms were more likely to issue bonds, but firms of lower quality tended to raise a higher fraction of their debt through bond issuance. Firms with higher proportion of their debt in bonds out had also a higher tendency to default. Institutional investors intensively funded firms with higher share of bonds in their long-term debt despite their lower quality, and therefore were partially responsible for the lax screening in the corporate bond market.

Journal of community psychology, 2021

Recent years have seen the implementation of educational programs aimed at developing future orie... more Recent years have seen the implementation of educational programs aimed at developing future orientation and better employability skills, mostly for people new to or returning to the job market. In a field study, we investigated the impact of a 5-day program on reintegration to civilian life on young Israeli combat soldiers' time preferences, gratitude, patriotism, and perceptions of their combat experience. Questionnaires administered before and after the program revealed a positive effect on future orientation but a negative effect on gratitude and perceptions of the combat experience. Although the positive effect on future orientation is in line with the program design, the negative effects found should be taken into consideration when planning or improving similar educational programs.

This article, in the field of behavioral economics, deals with the impact of technology on the hu... more This article, in the field of behavioral economics, deals with the impact of technology on the human decision-making process. Many companies worldwide offer technologies (platforms, devices, search engines, etc.) that purport to help a person in the various phases of decision making but still leave the final decision in the hands of the human being. Technologies may help a person make more intelligent and informed decisions, but they may also expose a person to many decision-making biases. We review the leading factors that cause decision-making biases due to the use of technologies and build a theoretical model for analyzing technologies that examines the feasibility of using them for decision making. We also demonstrate the implementation of this model on products of four well-known companies: Google, ProQuest, MobilEye, and Waze. Our model contributes to the literature on the impact of technology on human decision making and provides an important basis for future research on this topic.

We conducted an experiment to compare how overconfidence is influenced by performance-based and f... more We conducted an experiment to compare how overconfidence is influenced by performance-based and fixed payment schemes. Participants in the experiment were students prior to taking a final exam in Introduction to Microeconomics. We find that most participants were overconfident regarding their success on the exam, overestimating the number of questions they would answer correctly. When a fixed pay scheme was used, men were more overconfident than women. Performance-based pay increased the overconfidence of women, and decreased the overconfidence of men. As a result, no gender difference in overconfidence was found when pay is based on performance.

The European Journal of Health Economics

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics

International Review of Economics & Finance

Defence and Peace Economics

SSRN Electronic Journal

Decision-making processes can be influenced by situational factors, affecting risk taking. Backgr... more Decision-making processes can be influenced by situational factors, affecting risk taking. Background music, which is present in many everyday situations, has been shown to affect cognitive processes by influencing arousal and mood. The aim of the present study was to examine the possible effect of high-and low-arousal music on decision making in the context of financial investments, focusing on two tasks: a lottery-type task and a portfolio-diversification task. Participants were asked to make investment decisions while either high-tempo music, low-tempo music, or no music was played in the background. On the lottery-type task, low-tempo music led to more risky decisions (i.e., more investment in risky assets) than high-tempo or no music. On the portfolio-diversification task, low-tempo music led to more risky decisions (i.e., less diversification) than high-tempo music. Moreover, on both tasks, participants who subjectively perceived the music as helpful made riskier decisions. Results are discussed with regard to gender differences and previous findings.