Stochastic dominance permits a partial ordering of alternatives (probability distributions on consequences) based only on partial information about a decision maker’s utility function. Univariate stochastic dominance has been widely studied and applied, with general agreement on classes of...

The degree of downside risk aversion (or equivalently prudence) is so far usually measured by -U'''/U''. We propose here another measure, U'''/U', which has interesting properties, different from those related to -U'''/U''. It also appears that the two measures are not mutually exclusive....

Many papers in the litterature have adopted the expected utility paradigm to analyze insurance decisions. Insurance companies manage policies by growing, by adding independent risks. Even if adding risks generally ultimately decreases the probability of insolvency, the impact on the insurer's...

In this paper, we consider a décision-maker facing a financial risk flanked by a background risk, possibly non-financial, such as health or environmental risk. A decision has to be made about the amount of an investment (in the financial dimension) resulting in a future benefit either in the...

In this paper we propose benchmark values for the coefficients of relative risk aversion and relative prudence on the basis of a binary choice model where the decision maker chooses between aggregating or disaggragating multiplicative risks. We relate our results to the decison maker's...

In this paper, we analyze the impact of uncertainty on the level and properties of the bid rent function. We show that these properties strongly depend upon the way in which uncertainty is introduced into the model (delayed versus timeless uncertainty). We also investigate the implication of...

In this paper we discuss the interest of applying differential co-payment rates across alternative medical treatments. Two treatment strategies are considered: a "long term strategy" in which patients apply preventive measures before knowing if they have the desease and an "emergency strategy"...

Rectangularization of the survival probability seems to be an ongoing process. It results from a higher concentration of the ages at death; but it can be reversed by a continuous increase in the limit of life time. In this paper, we assume that these two factors are endogenous and we show that...

The achievements and limitations of the classical theory of optimal labor-income taxation based on social welfare functions are now well known, although utilitarianism still dominates public economics. We review the recent interest that has arisen for broadening the normative approach and making...

We provide Frank-Wolfe (= Conditional Gradients) method with a convergence analysis allowing to approach a primal-dual solution of convex optimization problem with composite objective function. Additional properties of complementary part of the objective (strong convexity) significantly...