Similarity and substitution: Using pile sorting methods to explore economic behavior

That’s the title of a new paper I’ve co-authored with Amelia Ales and Vincenzina Caputo that has been accepted for publication in the Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association . It has long been conjectured in economics that goods that are more similar will be stronger substitutes, but there is surprisingly scant evidence for this assertion. To explore this issue, we turn to a…