Debreu proposed the notion of `least concave utility' as a way to disentangle risk attitudes from the certainty preferences embedded in a von-Neumann Morgenstern index. This paper studies preferences under uncertainty, as opposed to risk, and examines a corresponding decomposition of preference....

This paper axiomatizes an intertemporal version of the Smooth Ambiguity decision model developed in Klibanoff, Marinacci, and Mukerji (2005). A key feature of the model is that it achieves a separation between ambiguity, identified as a characteristic of the decision maker's subjective beliefs,...

In this paper we examine the performance of theories of decision making under uncertainty/ambiguity from the perspective of their descriptive and predictive power, taking into account the relative parsimony of the various theories. To this end, we employ an innovative experimental design which...

Business corporations seek profit. That is, after subtracting cost, they maximize net revenue. Spillovers (both costs and benefits) involve trade-offs governing boards should make. Spillovers, especially when coupled with clumsy applications of discounted present value, distort a business'...

In this paper we aim to understand the role a welfare state can play in stimulating risky but profitable activities like investment in education, and in reducing income inequality. We analyze how unemployment benefits may affect investment in education when the latter is characterized by...

Suppose that there exists a positive (exogenous) probability that at each date of a possibly infinite future, the human species will disappear. We postulate an Ethical Observer (EO) who must solve an intertemporal welfare maximization problem under this kind of uncertainty, with preferences that...

The relationship between the concept of option value in the literature on environmental preservation and the financial theory of option value is discussed by Fisher (2000), suggesting an equivalence between the two concepts. In a recent paper, Mensink and Requate (2004) argue that Fisher’s...

Investment in pollution prevention technologies are often made under significant uncertainty about the future pay-off from the investments. However, as time passes some of the uncertainties may be resolved by new information, implying that the timing of investments becomes an important issue for...

The paper studies the interaction between cyclical uncertainty and investment in a stochastic real option framework where demand shifts stochastically between three different states, each with different rates of drift and volatility. In our setting the shifts are governed by a three-state Markov...

Epstein (2009) describes three Ellsberg-style thought experiments and argues that they pose difficulties for the smooth ambiguity model of decision making under uncertainty developed by Klibanoff, Marinacci and Mukerji (2005).  We revisit these thought exeperiments and find, to the contrary,...