Suchergebnisse

Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgments and permissions; List of abbreviations; 1 The challenge of understanding choice under risk; 2 Historical review of research through 1960; 3 Measuring individual risk preferences; 4 Aggregate-level evidence from the field; 5 What are risk preferences?; 6 Risky opportunities; 7 Possible ways forward; Index

This microeconomics text presents the traditional economic theories about utility and production, as well as the main alternative theories of consumer and company behaviour. It contains new theoretical functions created from specific optimisation procedures. Moreover, it details clearly the common function expression forms such as Cobb-Douglas and CES in which the theory is checked. Furthermore, it presents empirical tests and their interpretation in relation to the theory. Finally, the last chapter looks at choice made under conditions of uncertainty

Statistical learning, particularly probabilistic model learning, has become increasingly important in recent years. Probabilistic models, however, are not usually studied for their own sake but for decision-making purposes. Written by authorities in the field, "Utility-Based Learning from Data" approaches the probabilistic modeling problem from the point of view of decision makers who operate in an uncertain environment, base their decisions on a probabilistic model, and build and assess this model accordingly. After reviewing utility theory, the book surveys and extends popular stat

Utility-based theory and the fallback choice-theoretic framework are shown to be biased, irremediably flawed and misleading. A radically different theory of value and of consumer behaviour is proposed based on existential interpretations of scarcity, value and self-interest. For self-conscious mortals, only time is scarce. All other is derivative scarcity. Value is in the life, as a knowledge extract of time, which goes into commodities as direct human labour and depreciated capital, through their production. By structuring their preferences, consumers try to confiscate more of such.

In the simple Allingham-Sandmo portfolio model of tax evasion an expected utility maximizer will cheat more than what is estimated in empirical studies. Two main types of explanation have been suggested as solutions to this puzzle: (1) Tax payers act according to some non-expected utility theory, and (2) Individual ethical norms and social stigma induce people not to cheat. In the present study we test two hypotheses within these broad explanations: (1) Tax payers are weighting subjective probabilities of being penalised according to the rank dependent utility theory, and (2) Tax payers' beliefs about social norms have an effect on their decision to evade taxes. Our model is characterized by a simultaneous determination of tax evasion and labour supply, including the effect on tax payers of a social norm of not cheating. Using Norwegian survey data our hypotheses are corroborated. Our estimates imply that if the objective probability of being penalized is, say 3 %, the weighted probability is about 23 %. Our study provides an independent confirmation of the rank dependent expected utility theory. The model explains data 53% better than pure random choices and predicts hours worked in the regular economy, among tax evaders as well non tax evaders, rather precisely. The model is an example of a two sector choice model and the results indicate that an overall wage increase may shift labor supply away from the irregular part of the economy towards the regular.

A generic feature of advanced economic development is the rapid emergence of what Konrad Lorenz dubbed the 'Pleasure Economy' the rising percentage of household income spent on leisure consumption (Lorenz 1970). To explain such long run shifts in consumption, it is necessary to do away with the shadow that modern utility theory casts on the nature of consumer tastes and to investigate how these have indeed evolved in the face of a continuously expanding and increasingly heterogeneous set of consumption opportunities. Starting with the basic conjecture that the expansion of consumption is shaped by a set of biologically evolved behavioral predispositions which are inherent in the consumer's genetic endowment (Witt 2001), we examine the historical emergence of certain types of tourism to show how the interplay between these 'wants' and the act of recreational travel may account for the explosive growth of modern tourism activity.