TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gennaioli,Nicola
AU  - Shleifer,Andrei
TI  - What Comes to Mind
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15084
PY  - 2009
Y2  - June 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15084
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15084.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Nicola Gennaioli
CREI
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27
08005 Barcelona (Spain)
E-Mail: ngennaioli@crei.cat

Andrei Shleifer
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Center M-9
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-5046
Fax: 617/496-1708
E-Mail: ashleifer@harvard.edu
AB  - We present a model of judgment under uncertainty, in which an agent combines data received from the external world with information retrieved from memory to evaluate a hypothesis. We focus on what comes to mind immediately, as the agent makes quick, intuitive evaluations. Because the automatic retrieval of data from memory is both limited and selected, the agent's evaluations may be severely biased. This framework can account for some of the evidence on heuristics and biases presented by Kahneman and Tversky, including conjunction and disjunction fallacies.
ER  -