We report a portfolio-choice experiment that enables us to estimate parametric models of ambiguity aversion at the level of the individual subject. The assets are Arrow securities that correspond to three states of nature, where one state is risky with known probability and two states are...

In a continuous time life cycle model of consumption with an uncertain lifetime, we use a non-parametric specification of rank-dependent utility theory to characterize the preferences of the agent. We prove that time consistency holds for a subclass of probability-weighting function, providing...

A large body of evidence has documented that risk preferences depend nonlinearly on outcome probabilities. We discuss the foundations and economic consequences of probability-dependent risk preferences and offer a practitioner's guide to understanding and modeling probability dependence. We...

Stiglitz (1977) established three well-known features of monopoly insurance markets subject to adverse selection: (i) at least one market segment is served, despite the informational asymmetry; (ii) there is always some screening of risk classes; and (iii) efficiency is sacrificed to achieve...

A new laboratory experiment is designed to identify the best theories for describing decisions under risk. The experimental design has two noteworthy features: a representative sample of binary choice problems (for fair comparison across theories) and a lottery set with a small number of...

We consider a formal approach to comparative risk aversion and apply it to intertemporal choice models. This allows us to ask whether standard classes of utility functions, such as those inspired by Kihlstrom and Mirman (1974) [16], Selden (1978) [27], Epstein and Zin (1989) [10] and Quiggin...

When confronted with uncertain prospects, people often exhibit both choice deferral and Ellsberg-type ambiguity aversion. This paper obtains a joint representation for these behavioral phenomena. The decision maker as portrayed by my model is willing to choose an uncertain prospect f over g...

In this paper, we establish an axiomatically founded generalized recursive smooth ambiguity model that allows for a separation among intertemporal substitution, risk aversion, and ambiguity aversion. We axiomatize this model using two approaches: the second-order act approach à la Klibanoff,...