In the workhorse  model of welfare economics, the elasticity of marginal utility, often denoted as η, serves simultaneously to represent aversion to risk, aversion to spatial inequality, and preferences for intertemporal substitution.  While Kreps-Porteus-Selden and Epstein-Zin preferences...

The exchange between Epstein (2010) and Klibanoff et al. (2012) identified a behavioral issue that sharply distinguishes between two classes of models of ambiguity sensitivity, exemplified by the Î±-MEU model and the smooth ambiguity model, respectively. The issue in question is whether a...

We define a behavioral concept of relevance in the context of decision making under uncertainty.  We argue that this concept provides a sensible answer to the question "What probabilistic environments do an individuals' preferences reveal as mattering to her decisions?" under a symmetry...

A theory of decision making is proposed that supplies an axiomatic basis for the concept of satisficing postulated by Herbert Simon. After a detailed review of classical results that characterize several varieties of preference-maximizing choice behavior, the axiomatization proceeds by weakening...

We axiomatize preferences that can be represented by a monotonic aggregation of subjective expected utilities generated by a utility function and some set of i.i.d. probability measures over a product state space, S1. For such preferences, we define relevant measures, show that they are treated...

We experimentally investigate the extent to which social obervability of one's actions and the possibility of social non-monetary judgment affect the decision to engage in rule breaking behavior.  We consider three rule bfeaking scenarios - theft, bribery and embezzlement - in the absence of...

Ultimatum games have been extensively used in experimental studies. By studying the consequences that restrictions shared by ultimatum games have in subject`s behaviour, this paper argues that some results are falsified by design constraints. This paper also presets a taxonomy of certification,...

This paper is empirical study, using new experimental data, of repeated game strategies in trust games; its goal is to identify strategies that people use in repeated games. We develop a strategy inference method that maps observed actions to a set of best fitting unobserved repeated game...

Through an experiment this study investigates the effects that verification has on honest traders. This paper demonstrates that by reducing the scope for trust verification can have a negative effect on the behaviour of honest individuals. Specifically, the analysis shows that trustworthy agents...

In this note, we present a novel computerized real effort task based on moving sliders across a screen which overcomes many of the drawbacks of existing real effort tasks.  The task was first developed and used by us in Gill and Prowse (2009).  We outline the design of our "slider task",...