I show that a loss averse consumer who must share her budget between two goods prefer allocations for which consumption equals reference point for at least one good. The phenomenon intensity depends on the curvature of the utility curve. These results are consistent with several stylized facts...

This paper examines the determinants of tax evasion under prospect theory. For prospect theory, reference dependence is a fundamental element (the utility function depends on gains and losses relative to a reference point and not on final wealths as in expected utility theory). In order to...

The explanation of social inequalities in education is still a debated issue in economics. Recent empirical studies tend to downplay the potential role of credit constraint. This article tests a different potential explanation of social inequalities in education, specifically that social...

We investigate the relation between welfare and preference satisfaction in economics, and show that the extension of the scope of economic analysis through the 20th century forces economists to question the validity of the preference satisfaction criterion as a normative criterion for evaluating...

In an often quoted article, Genesove and Mayer (2001) observe that house sellers are reluctant to sell at a loss, and attribute this finding to loss aversion. I show that loss aversion cannot explain this phenomenon.

Global environmental phenomena like climate change, major extinction events or flutype pandemics can have catastrophic consequences. By properly assessing the outcomes involved - especially those concerning human life - economic theory of choice under uncertainty is expected to help people take...

If an investor does care for utilities -and not for monetary outcomes- stochastic dominances should be expressed in terms of utility units ("utils"). If so, any "rational" investor may be characterized by an elementary utility function -called canonical utility function- which is such that the...

Although it is endowed with many interesting properties, the theory of decision-making under risk by Loomes and Sugden [1986] has never been given an axiomatics. In this paper, we make up for this omission because their lottery-dependent functional is endowed with many interesting properties to...

This paper elaborates an axiomatic treatment of the Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) model that dispenses with the assumption of an exogenous state space. Within a state-free description of uncertainty and alternatives, axioms for preferences are formulated and shown to characterize the...

Since von Neuman and Morgenstern's (1944) contribution to game theory, a rational decision maker will rank risky prospects according to the celebrated Expected utility criterion. This method takes lotteries i.e. (simple) probability distributions to represent risky prospects. If the decision...