An agent wants to derive her belief over outcomes based on past observations collected in her database (memory). There is well establish evidence in the psychology and marketing literature that agents consistently fail (or choose not) to process all available information. An agent might be...

It has been widely documented that reference points influence the choice. If references affect choice by attracting attention towards an alternative, what can be said about the joint effect of the references? Assuming that references form preferences, or are rational filters, this paper extracts...

Expected utility theory (EUT) is currently the standard framework which formally defines rational decision-making under risky conditions. EUT uses a theoretical device called von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function, where concepts of function and random variable are employed in their...

Recent papers by Cox and Sadiraj (2006) and Rubinstein (2006) have pointed out that expected utility theory is more general than has sometimes been acknowledged, and can hence not be refuted as easily by means of experiments. While acknowledging this fact, this note nevertheless demonstrates...

We investigate whether violations of canonical axioms of choice under risk are mistakes or a manifestation of true preferences. First, we elicit axiom and gamble preferences and then allow subjects to revise their potentially conflicting preferences. Among the behavioral patterns that allow for...

This paper suggests a new explanation for the low level of annuitization, which is valid even if one assumes perfect markets. We show that, as soon there exists a positive bequest motive, sufficiently risk averse individuals should not purchase annuities. A model calibration accounting for...