No 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.

This cumulative dissertation contains three articles. The first and second article present industrial organization models that investigate the economic consequences of two different forms of the allocation of attention. The third article identifies financial constraints as one determining factor for the allocation of attention from experimental data. In sum, the articles highlight economic implications of limited attention as well as the influence of the individual economic endowment on the allocation of attention.