We consider a life-cycle model with bequest motives, and assume that the individual does not know his/hersurvival probability and has maxmin utility preferences; we show that it is optimal not to annuitize but to purchase pure life insurance policies instead.

We consider a formal approach to comparative risk aversion and apply it to intertemporal choice models. This makes it possible to investigate whether standard classes of utility functions, such as those inspired from Kihlstrom and Mirman (1974), Selden (1978), Epstein and Zin (1989) or Quiggin...

The investigations reported in this article examined some of the individual and situational determinants of the level of cognitive product differentiation in consumer products judgements, Subjects consisted of four large samples of male and female consumers in two large metropolitan areas in the...

The very diversity of cultures impels the economist to respect a principle of modesty when it comes to specifying the degree of universality to which the science of economics can lay claim. In considering this issue, this paper: a) criticizes the ambition of certain forms of economic thought to...

The article discusses the origins of the U-shaped average cost curve, which is one of the most widely used tools in microeconomic analysis. Its widespread use leads many to consider it as a basic tool, obscuring the fact that the graph of the U-shaped average cost curve is part of a complex...

Hayek’s and Popper’s bibliographies, their biographies, their methodological theses in favor of individualism, their common commitment against historicism, historism and planism, and crossed references in their writings bring us to infer (at least) some intellectual debate between them, or...

In 'The Methodology of Positive Economics' (1953), Milton Friedman linked the adoption of a falsificationist methodology to the rejection of monopolistic competition as a valid assumption, thus elaborating a point made earlier by George Stigler in 'Monopolistic Competition in Retrospect' (1949)....