A representative individual lives for two periods; works when young and depends on savings and a government operated social security system when old—the returns on both sources of income, when old, are random. Due to administrative problems the returns to savings are observed with some...

In a critique of the Loewenstein and Prelec [Loewenstein G., Prelec D., 1992. Anomalies in intertemporal choice: Evidence and an interpretation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, 573-597] theory of intertemporal choice, [al-Nowaihi, A., Dhami, S., 2006. A note on the Loewenstein-Prelec...

We show that preference-homogeneity and loss-aversion are necessary and sufficient for the value function to have the power form with identical powers for gains and losses and for the probability weighting functions for gains and losses to be identical.

Loewenstein and Prelec (1992) explain the 'magnitude effect' and the 'sign effect', respectively, by using increasing elasticity of the value function and a higher elasticity for losses as compared to gains. We provide a value function with these two properties.