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Institute of Economics

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  7. New BERG Working Paper No. 159 by Stefanie Y. Schmitt and Markus G. Schlatterer published!

New BERG Working Paper No. 159 by Stefanie Y. Schmitt and Markus G. Schlatterer published!

In the BERG Working Paper Series Stefanie Y. Schmitt and Markus G. Schlatterer have published a new paper entitled „Poverty and Limited Attention“.

A complete overview of all BERG Working Papers published so far can be found here.

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Abstract

In this article, we analyze whether the financial strain of poverty systematically alters the allocation of attention. We address two types of attention: attention to unexpectedly occurring events and attention to primary tasks that require focus. We show that the poor are significantly more likely than the rich to notice unexpected events. In addition, we find evidence that the poor notice unexpected events at the expense of attention to the primary task only if the task is sufficiently difficult.