Given the possibility to modify the probability of a loss, will a profit-maximizing insurer engage in loss prevention or is it in his interest to increase the loss probability? This paper investigates this question. First, we calculate the expected profit maximizing loss probability within an...

In Arrow's seminal analysis of optimal risk bearing in which he introduced contingent claim securities, he assumed preferences were representable by a state independent Expected Utility function. Although the classic contingent claim setting assumes agents choose over contingent consumption...

We investigate the origin of stochastic choice and differentiate between three classes of models that account for it: Random Utility, Bounded Rationality, and Deliberate Randomization. We conduct an experiment in which subjects face the same questions repeated multiple times, but we consider...

Although there are alternative models which can explain the Allais paradox with non-standard preferences, they do not take the emerging evidence on preference imprecision into account. The imprecision is so far incorporated into these models by adding a stochastic specification implying the...

Elicitation procedures (e.g., choice, valuation, matching, joint/separate evaluation) may generate reversed preferences between alternatives. Yet procedure-dependent preferences can be endogenous. When attribute importance is imperfectly known, people can engage in costly information...

Recent theories of fairness (e.g., Bolton & Ockenfels, 2000; Fehr & Schmidt, 1999) have typically used the assumption of ex ante known pie size. Here I explore theoretically the ramifications of pie size being unknown ex ante. Using a simple allocation problem known as dictator game, I find that...

Most theories of risky choice postulate that a decision maker maximizes the expectation of a Bernoulli (or utility or similar) function. We tour 60 years of empirical search and conclude that no such functions have yet been found that are useful for out-of-sample prediction. Nor do we find...

Consider a finite data set where each observation consists of a bundle of contingent consumption chosen from a constraint set of contingent consumption bundles. We develop a general procedure for testing the consistency of such a data set with a broad class of models of choice under risk or...

Asset demand tests for Expected Utility have almost universally been implemented in contingent claim settings where markets are complete. However when markets are incomplete, these tests cannot be applied since contingent claim prices cannot be uniquely recovered from given asset prices and the...

Market theorists assume that expected utility predicts preferences at the market level even as evidence mounts that it predicts poorly at the individual level. The arguments for better-performing markets are grounded in the assumption that individuals respond to the competition of the market....