This paper analyses the behavior of an individual who wants to maximize his utility function, but he is not able to evaluate it. There are many ways to choose a single alternative from a given set. We show that a unique utility maximizing procedure exists. Choices induced by this optimal...

The origin of prospect theory is the desire to test the intuitive statistician in the real world. The development of this theory by the cognitive psychologists Kahneman and Tversky can be traced to the former's work in cognitive psychophysics, in which deviations from average behavior are termed...

When agents have present bias, they discount more between now and thenext period than between period t ( 1) and t + 1. How fast the future discount rate (evaluated today) decays is an empirical question. Weshow that the discount function can be non-parametrically identified withcontracts that...

Almost two in 10 adults in the U.S. and Europe are, at any moment in time, diagnosed with a mental illness. This paper asks whether mental illness is over- (or under-) diagnosed, by looking at its causal effect on individuals at the margin of diagnosis. We follow all Swedish men born between...

When agents have present bias, they discount more between now and the next period than between period t ( 1) and t 1. How fast the future discount rate (evaluated today) decays is an empirical question. We show that the discount function can be non-parametrically identified with contracts that...

This paper presents a new axiomatic characterization of risk measures that are additive for independent random variables. In contrast to previous work, we include an axiom that guarantees monotonicity of the risk measure. Furthermore, the axiom of additivity for independent random variables is...

The common view that buyer power of insurers may effectively counteract provider market power critically rests on the idea that consumers and insurers have a joint interest in extracting price concessions. However, in markets where the buyer is an insurer, the interests of insurers and consumers...

We study experimentally whether the endowment effect survives in a social and strategic context. Participants are asked for their Willingness-to-Accept (WTA) or Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) to play a series of 2x2 games. In the second part of the experiment, we study the endowment effect in...

We conduct an experiment to test whether the size of a loss and the time in a losing position affect investors’ adaptation to the loss situation and, subsequently, whether this adaptation affects future investment decisions. As investors adapt to losses, their neutral reference point shifts...

We consider the possibility that cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma is fostered by people's voluntarily enhancement of their own vulnerability. The vulnerability of a player determines the effectiveness of possible punishment by the other. In the Gradual mechanism, players may condition their...