Preference reversals and nonexpected utility behavior
In: Working paper series 8813
In: Working paper series 8813
In: Joensuun yliopiston yhteiskuntatieteellisiä julkaisuja n:o 27
In: University of Joensuu publications in social sciences
1.The construction of preference : an overview /Sarah Lichtenstein and Paul Slovic --2.Relative importance of probabilities and payoffs in risk taking /Paul Slovic and Sarah Lichtenstein --3.Reversals of preference between bids and choices in gambling decisions /Sarah Lichtenstein and Paul Slovic --4.Response-induced reversals of preference in gambling : an extended replication in Las Vegas /Sarah Lichtenstein and Paul Slovic --5.Economic theory of choice and the preference reversal phenomenon /David M. Grether and Charles R. Plott --6.Contingent weighting in judgment and choice /Amos Tversky, Samuel Sattath and Paul Slovic --7.Cognitive processes in preference reversals /David A. Schkade and Eric J. Johnson.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors
In: Working paper series 2010,3
In: University of Tübingen Working Papers in Economics and Finance 47
We demonstrate that a rank-preserving transfer from a richer individual to a poorer individual can exacerbate income inequality (when inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient). This happens when individuals' preferences depend negatively not only on work time (effort) but also on low relative income. It is rigorously shown that the set of preference profiles that gives rise to this perverse effect of a transfer on inequality is a non-empty open subset of all preference profiles. A robust example illustrates this result. -- A rank-preserving inequality-narrowing transfer ; The Gini coefficient ; Low relative income ; Relative deprivation ; Exacerbated inequality
1.3 Subjective expected utility theory (SE -- 1.4 Eliciting the utility function under EU -- 1.4.1 The case of known probabilities -- 1.4.2 The case of unknown probabilities -- 1.5 Violations of expected utility theory -- 1.5.1 Violations of the independence axiom -- 1.5.2 The probability triangle and violations of the axioms of rationality -- 1.5.3 Some attempts to relax the independence axiom -- 1.5.4 Attitudes to risk for small and large stakes: Rabin's paradox -- 1.5.5 Violations of description invariance -- 1.5.6 Preference reversals -- 1.5.7 Is the reduction axiom supported by the evidence?
In: NBER working paper series 16387
"We present a theory of choice among lotteries in which the decision maker's attention is drawn to (precisely defined) salient payoffs. This leads the decision maker to a context-dependent representation of lotteries in which true probabilities are replaced by decision weights distorted in favor of salient payoffs. By endogenizing decision weights as a function of payoffs, our model provides a novel and unified account of many empirical phenomena, including frequent risk-seeking behavior, invariance failures such as the Allais paradox, and preference reversals. It also yields new predictions, including some that distinguish it from Prospect Theory, which we test"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site
In: Economic Studies in Inequality, Social Exclusion and Well-Being Ser.
Intro -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- 1 Introduction -- 2 An Agricultural Household Model with Tariffs -- 2.1 General Formulation -- 2.1.1 Household Welfare -- 2.1.2 The Impacts of Tariff Changes -- 2.2 A Baseline Model -- 3 Data and Estimation -- 3.1 The Household Surveys -- 3.2 Harmonization -- 3.3 Trade Policy and Price Changes -- 3.4 Expenditure and Income Shares -- 3.5 Labor Income in the Baseline Model -- 3.6 Transfers -- 4 Income Gains and Inequality Costs -- 4.1 Income Gains from Trade -- 4.1.1 Sources of Gains from Trade -- 4.1.2 The Gender Bias of Trade -- 4.2 The Distributional Effects of Trade -- 4.2.1 Countries with Pro-poor Bias -- 4.2.2 Countries with Pro-rich Bias -- 4.3 Worldwide Gains -- 5 The Trade-Off -- 5.1 No Trade-off Countries -- 5.2 Trade-off Countries without Trade Policy Preference Reversals -- 5.3 Trade-off Countries with Trade Policy Preference Reversals -- 5.4 Assessment -- 5.5 Underlying Factors: Expenditure and Income Household Heterogeneity -- 6 Alternative Models -- 6.1 Models of Labor Markets -- 6.1.1 No Labor Markets -- 6.1.2 Imperfectly Mobile Labor -- Production Functions -- Workers' Choices -- Equilibrium -- Calibration at the Steady State -- Trade Shock Simulations -- First Order Welfare Effects -- Wage and Non-traded Price Responses to Trade Shocks -- 6.2 Models of Income Tax Redistribution -- 6.2.1 No Revenue Loss -- 6.2.2 Income Tax Progressivity -- 6.3 The Gains from Trade -- 6.4 The Trade-offs -- 7 HIT: Household Impacts of Trade -- 7.1 The Household Impacts of Tariff Database -- 7.2 Agricultural Tariff Liberalization -- 8 Conclusions -- Bibliography.
In: Routledge advances in experimental and computable economics
chapter 1 Introduction: epistemology, experiments and economics -- part PART 1 The social epistemology of experiment -- chapter 2 Creating phenomena in the lab -- chapter 3 Creating microeconomic phenomena -- chapter 4 Intervening in the 'material world' -- chapter 5 Intervening in the 'social world' -- chapter 6 The social epistemology of experiment -- part PART 2 The social epistemology of experimental economics -- chapter 7 The foundation of experimental economics -- chapter 8 Early methodological debate in experimental economics -- chapter 9 Economics experiments and the real world -- chapter 10 Human agency (or lack thereof) in economics experiments -- chapter 11 Behavioural experiments: How economists learn about human behaviour -- chapter 12 Preference reversals and critical practice in economics -- chapter 13 Conclusion: What about the social epistemology of experiment?.
In: Discussion paper series 2993
In the last twenty years a growing body of experimental evidence has posed a challenge to the standard Exponential Discounting Model of choice over time. Attention has focused on some specific 'anomalies', notably preference reversal and declining discount rates, leading to the formulation of the model of hyperbolic discounting which is finding increasing favour in the literature. In this paper we provide a survey of both the theoretical modelling and the experimental evidence relating to choice over time. As we will show, a careful analysis of the mapping between theoretical models and experimental investigations raises questions as to whether some of the most focused upon anomalies should be indeed classified as such, or whether they are really the most challenging ones for conventional theory. New developments are emerging both at the theoretical and empirical level, opening up new exciting avenues for investigation.
In: International Economics and Institutions
This book constitutes a theoretical inquiry into the reasons for convergence, divergence and, in a trade theoretic perspective, for a reversal of trade patterns. It describes various mechanisms determining factor rewards and the change of trade patterns of growing economies. Special attention is paid to the effects of internationally differing preferences, unequal factor accumulation, technological change and government intervention. The chapters of this book are in the tradition of the "new" growth and trade theory and elaborate novel results, especially with respect to factor rewards, convergence and trade patterns. It also contains appendices to the individual chapters deriving the results in the main text in a very explicit and informative way
In: Handbooks in economics
Front Cover -- Handbook of Behavioral Economics - Foundations and Applications 2 -- Copyright -- Contents -- Contributors -- Introduction to the series -- Preface -- 1 Intertemporal choice -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Present-focused preferences: theoretical commonalities -- 2.1 Present-biased preferences -- 2.2 Unitary-self models with temptation -- 2.3 Multiple-self models with simultaneous selves -- 2.4 Objective risks that reduce future value -- 2.5 Models with psychometric distortions -- 2.6 Models of myopia -- 2.7 Overview of models of present-focused preferences -- 2.8 Models that do not generate present-focused preferences -- 3 Empirical regularities and open puzzles -- 3.1 Preferences over monetary receipt timing -- 3.2 Preferences over consumption timing -- 3.3 Preference reversals -- 3.4 Procrastination -- 3.4.1 Explanations for procrastination -- 3.5 Naiveté -- 3.6 The effect of transactions costs -- 3.7 Lack of liquidity on household balance sheets -- 3.8 Commitment -- 3.9 Paternalistic policy and welfare -- 3.10 Preference for improving sequences -- 4 Puzzles without associated empirical regularities -- 4.1 How soon is now? -- 4.2 The role of temptation -- 4.3 Other mechanisms and complementary psychological conceptions -- 4.3.1 Risk -- 4.3.2 Heuristics -- 4.3.3 Other theories -- 4.4 Stability and domain generality -- 4.5 Malleability and self-management -- 4.6 Retirement saving adequacy -- 5 Conclusion -- References -- 2 Errors in probabilistic reasoning and judgment biases -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Biased beliefs about random sequences -- 2.1 The gambler's fallacy and the Law of Small Numbers -- 2.2 The hot-hand bias -- 2.3 Additional biases in beliefs about random sequences -- 3 Biased beliefs about sampling distributions -- 3.1 Partition dependence -- 3.2 Sample-size neglect and Non-Belief in the Law of Large Numbers
Cover -- Half-title page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- Preface -- List of Contributors -- 1. Introduction to Experimental Economics -- I. A Brief History of Experimental Economics -- A. Early Experiments: 1930-1960 -- 1. Individual Choice and the Wallis-Friedman Critique -- 2. Game-Theoretic Hypotheses -- 3. Industrial Organization -- B. The 1960s to the Present -- II. The Uses of Experimentation -- III. Some Series of Experiments -- A. Prisoners' Dilemmas and Public Goods -- 1. The Prisoner's Dilemma -- a. Experiments versus Simulations: A Methodological Digression -- 2. The Free-Rider Problem in Public Goods Provision -- B. Coordination -- C. Bargaining Behavior -- D. Market Organization and Competitive Equilibrium -- 1. Repeated Double Auctions with Stationary Parameters -- 2. Some Policy-Oriented Comparisons of Market Rules -- 3. Information Aggregation: Markets as Forecasters -- E. Auction Markets and Disequilibrium Behavior -- 2. Some Other Auction Results -- a. Controlling Incentives: A Methodological Digression -- F. Individual Choice Behavior -- 1. Preference Reversals -- a. Alternative Theoretical Directions -- b. Market Behavior -- 2. Other Choice Phenomena -- 3. Why Haven't These Demonstrated Anomalies Swept Away Utility Theory? -- 4. Experimental Control of Individual Preferences -- a. The BDM Procedure for Measuring Reservation Prices -- b. Controlling Preferences with Monetary Payoffs -- c. Controlling for Unobserved Risk Preferences with Binary Lottery Payoffs -- (1) Preferences and Probabilities: A Historical Digression on Binary Lotteries and Related Experimental Designs -- d. To Control or Not to Control? Costs and Benefits -- Notes -- Bibliography -- 2. Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research -- I. Introduction -- A. A Simple Public Goods Experiment -- B. The Art of Experiment: Sensitivity and Control.
In: Theory and Decision Library, Series A: Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences 11
In: Theory and Decision Library A:, Rational Choice in Practical Philosophy and Philosophy of Science 11
to the Volume -- I: Economic Factors and Individual Satisfaction -- National Wealth and Individual Happiness -- Beliefs about Attainment of Life Satisfaction as Determinants of Preferences for Everyday Activities -- Need for Achievement and Entrepreneurial Activity in Small Firms -- The Kibbutz and Private Property -- II: Inflation, Unemployment, and Taxation -- Perceptions of Inflation -- Cross-Sectional Evidence on the Rationality of the Mean and Variance of Inflation Expectations -- The Perceived Causal Structure of Unemployment -- A Cross-National Comparison of Attitudes, Personality, Behaviour, and Social Comparison in Tax Evasion Experiments -- Perception and Judgment of Marginal Tax Rates After a Tax Reduction -- III: Utility and Decision Theory -- Beyond the Expected Utility Proposition in Rational Decision Making -- Levels of Aspiration, Promises, and the Possibility of Revaluation -- Another Attitude Towards Multi-Attribute Attitude Theories -- Application of the Valence-Instrumentality-Expectancy and Multiattribute Utility Models in the Prediction of Worker Effort -- Prediction of Preference Reversals by the Linearized Moments Model -- Economic Man or Social Man — Exploring Free Riding in the Production of Collective Goods -- IV: Consumer Behaviour -- From the Consumption of Necessities to Experience-Seeking Consumption -- Personality Traits as Elements in a Model of Eating Behaviour -- The "New Values" and Consumer Behaviour — Some Empirical Findings From Austria -- Understanding Children's Economic Socialization -- A Model of Consumer Behaviour in the Situation of Shortages -- V: New Views on Economic Analysis -- The Quantitative Analysis of Economic Behavior With Laboratory Animals -- Subjectivism in Economics — A Suggested Reorientation.