The famous Afriat’s theorem from the theory of revealed preferences establishes necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of utility function for a given set of choices and prices. The result on the existence of a homogeneous utility function can be considered as a particular fact...

Unemployment insurance replacement rates world-wide are well below 100 percent, a fact often attributed to search moral hazard concerns. As Blanchard and Tirole (2008) have illustrated, however, neither search nor layoff moral hazard (firing cost) distortions need arise in first-best insurance...

We develop an extension of the familiar linear mixed logit model to allow for the direct estimation of parametric non-linear functions defined over structural parameters. A classic application is the estimation of coefficients of utility functions to characterize risk attitudes. There are...

The well-known Easterlin paradox points out that average happiness has remained constant over time despite sharp rises in GNP per head. At the same time, a micro literature has typically found positive correlations between individual income and individual measures of subjective well-being. This...

This work is an initial exploration of the use of the decision-theoretic concept of utility to guide pattern mining. We present the use of utility functions as against thresholds and constraints as the mechanism to express user preferences and formulate several pattern mining problems that use...

Existing preference reasoning systems have been successful insimple domains. Broader success requires more natural and moreexpressive preference representations. This thesis develops arepresentation of logical preferences that combines numericaltradeoff ratios between partial outcome...

Utility and risk are two often competing measurements on the investment success. We show that efficient trade-off between these two measurements for investment portfolios happens, in general, on a convex curve in the two-dimensional space of utility and risk. This is a rather general pattern....

This paper addresses whether and to what extent econometric methods used in experimental studies can be adapted and applied to financial data to detect the best-fitting preference model. To address the research ques- tion, we implement a frequently used nonlinear probit model in the style of Hey...

High speed railway (HSR) planners aim to select locations that optimize the overall utility or benefit of HSR stations by satisfying various desirable requirements. Among other factors, accessibility and environmental impact are important considerations for HSR station location selection. The...

We are interested in defining the optimal retirement age by socio-economic class, given a Defined Benefit and a Notional Defined Contribution scheme. We firstly implement a utilitarian framework. Depending on the risk aversion coefficients and individual time preference factors, the results...