What are the determinants of the optimal level of effort to reduce the probability of a loss to occur? Whereas most of the literature on this question focused on risk aversion, we show that the concept of prudence (i.e., a positive third derivative of the utility function) is essential to answer...

In this note we use the rank-dependent utility (RDU) model to analyze saving decisions. The RDU model enables us to separate the effects of pessimism and optimism on saving from that of concavity of the utility function. While pessimism induces more saving, the importance of this effect is shown...

In this letter, we show that the results presented by Jindapon and Neilson (2007) for changes in risk à la Ekern (1980) can be generalized to mean-preserving stochastic dominance changes, with appropriate and simple additional conditions on the utility function.