Two recently published studies argue that conventional parameterizations of cumulative prospect theory (CPT) fail to resolve the St. Petersburg Paradox. Yet as a descriptive theory CPT is not intended to account for the local representativeness effect, which is known to induce 'alternation bias'...

Probabilistic risk beliefs are key drivers of economic and health decisions, but people are not always certain about their beliefs. We study these "imprecise probabilities", also known as ambiguous beliefs. We show that imprecision is measurable separately from the levels of risk beliefs. People...

The well-known Blackwell's theorem states the equivalence of statistical informativeness and economic valuableness. Celen (2012) generalizes this theorem, which is well-known for subjective expected utility (SEU), to maxmin expected utility (MEU) preferences. We demonstrate that the underlying...

Two recently published studies argue that conventional parameterizations of cumulative prospect theory (CPT) fail to resolve the St. Petersburg Paradox. Yet as a descriptive theory CPT is not intended to account for the local representativeness effect, which is known to induce 'alternation bias'...

We propose a model of instrumental belief choice under loss aversion. When new information arrives, an agent is prompted to abandon her prior. However, potential posteriors may induce her to take actions that generate a lower utility in some states than actions induced by her prior. These losses...

We employ a novel approach to investigate the reasons for a low demand for agricultural insurance. We confirm that farmers systematically undervalue agricultural insurance. First, we find that private transfers, mainly from family members, explain under-valuation of agricultural insurance....

It is often easier to identify agents’ preferences for action, holding probabilities fixed, than to delineate all the possible consequences of actions. Under what conditions can such preferences be formulated as if agents maximize expected utility? As Green and Osband (1991) noted,...

Anscombe and Aumann (1963) offer a definition of subjective probability in terms of comparisons with objective probabilities. That definition - which has provided the basis for much of the succeeding work on subjective probability - presumes that the subjective probability of an event is...

Anscombe and Aumann (1963) offer a definition of subjective probability in terms of comparisons with objective probabilities. That definition - which has provided the basis for much of the succeeding work on subjective probability - presumes that the subjective probability of an event is...