Economists turn off your TIVO — the “Deal or No Deal” paper has already been written

I blogged yesterday about a new game show called “Deal or No Deal” and how it was an obvious candidate for economists to study risk aversion. So obvious, in fact, that Jennifer List (who is not even an economist, only married to one of my colleagues here at University of Chicago), yelled up to her husband that she had his next paper topic after watching no more than five minutes of this show.

And when something is this obvious, economics predicts that it has already been done. Indeed, it turns out there is an Italian version of the show called “Affari Tuoi” and the economists Matilde Bombardini and Francesco Trebbi have already written the paper.

Hats off to Bombardini and Trebbi.