This paper explores the relation between decision theoretic conceptions of risk and the conceptions held by executives. It considers recent studies of risk attitudes and behavior among managers against the background of conceptions of risk derived from theories of choice. We conclude that...

Personal experience matters. In a field setting with longitudinal data, we disentangle the effects of learning new information from the effects of personal experience. We demonstrate that experience with a fine, controlling for the effect of learning new information, significantly boosts future...

In the aftermath of many natural and man-made disasters, people often wonder why those affected were underprepared, especially when the disaster was the result of known or regularly occurring hazards (e.g., hurricanes). We study one contributing factor: prior near-miss experiences. Near misses...

Despite the central role of arbitrage in finance and economic theory, there is limited evidence of the factors that create and eliminate arbitrage opportunities, how often arbitrage occurs, and how profitable it is. We address these gaps via a transaction-level analysis of spatial arbitrage in...

We investigate whether the gender composition of teams affects their economic performance. We study a large business game, played in groups of three, in which each group takes the role of a general manager. There are two parallel competitions, one involving undergraduates and the other involving...

Two recent models of risky decision making developed by Fishburn (Fishbijrn, P. C. 1977. Mean-risk analysis with risk associated with below-target returns. Amer. Econ. Rev. 67 116--126.) and by Kahneman and Tversky (Kahneman, D., A. Tversky. 1979. Prospect theory: an analysis of decisions under...

We describe a new anomaly in intertemporal choice---the "date/delay effect": discount rates that are imputed when time is described using calendar dates (e.g., on October 17) are markedly lower than those revealed when future outcomes are described in terms of the corresponding delay (e.g., in...

This study explains why gain/loss discount rate differences reported in previous studies cannot be attributed to outcome sign alone, but rather, must be associated with particular outcome-sign/question-frame combinations. To do so, it extends Loewenstein's (1988) framing model of intertemporal...