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Mental Accounting

"An economic concept established by economist Richard Thaler, which contends that individuals divide their current and future assets into separate, non-transferable portions. The theory purports individuals assign different levels of utility to each asset group, which affects their consumption decisions and other behaviors."
Investopedia.com: Mental Accounting

"If Richard Thaler's concept of mental accounting is one of two pillars upon which the whole of behavioral economics rests, then prospect theory is the other."
Belsky and Gilovich (1999)

"...mental accounting as a cause of a historical equity premium that has been too high, relative to the underlying fundamentals..."
Shefrin (2000)

"Mental accounting: Thaler (1980) and Kahneman, Knetch and Thaler (1991)."
Taleb (2004)

Top 10 Papers

1. THALER, R., 1985. Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice. Marketing Science. [Cited by 1447] (61.79/year)
2. THALER, R.H., 1999. Mental Accounting Matters. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. [Cited by 528] (56.07/year)
3. BARBERIS, N. and M. HUANG, 2001. Mental Accounting, Loss Aversion, and Individual Stock Returns. The Journal of Finance. [Cited by 281] (37.89/year)
4. PRELEC, D. and G. LOEWENSTEIN, 2007. The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt. Exotic Preferences: Behavioral Economics and Human …. [Cited by 203] (143.26/year)
5. HENDERSON, P.W. and R.A. PETERSON, 1992. Mental accounting and categorization. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. [Cited by 88] (5.36/year)
6. HEATH, C., 1995. … De-escalation of Commitment in Response to Sunk Costs: The Role of Budgeting in Mental Accounting. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. [Cited by 115] (8.57/year)
7. HEATH, T.B., S. CHATTERJEE and K.R. FRANCE, 1995. Mental Accounting and Changes in Price: The Frame Dependence of Reference Dependence. Journal of Consumer Research. [Cited by 71] (5.29/year)
8. LANGER, T. and M. WEBER, 2001. Prospect Theory, Mental Accounting, and Differences in Aggregated and Segregated Evaluation of …. Management Science. [Cited by 47] (6.34/year)
9. SHEFRIN, H.M. and R.H. THALER, 1992. Mental accounting, saving, and self-control. Choice over time. [Cited by 67] (4.08/year)
10. GRINBLATT, M. and B. HAN, 2005. Prospect theory, mental accounting, and momentum. Journal of Financial Economics. [Cited by 75] (21.95/year)

Links

• Wikipedia: Mental accounting
• Investopedia.com: Mental Accounting

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