Experiments on Decisions under Risk: The Expected Utility Hypothesis

Experiments on Decisions under Risk: The Expected Utility Hypothesis
Author: P.J.H. Schoemaker
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2013-11-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9401750408

In this valuable book, Paul Schoemaker summarizes recent experimental and field research that he and others have undertaken regarding the descrip tive validity of expected utility theory as a model of choice under uncer tainty. His principal message is that this paradigm is too narrow in its con ception and misses some of the important elements of a descriptive model of individual choice. In particular, Schoemaker calls attention to the impor tance of individual differences, task effects, and context effects as they influence behavior. The expected utility hypothesis has come under scrutiny in recent years from a number of different quarters. This book brings together these many studies and relates them to the large body of literature on individual de cision making under risk. Although this paradigm may be appropriate for describing behavior under many conditions of uncertainty, Schoemaker presents convincing evidence that it does not do well with respect to protec tion against low-probability events. For example, he shows that the insur ance purchase decision is influenced by the way information is presented to the client, as well as by the statistical knowledge of the respondents.

Three Experiments on Decision-making Under Uncertainty in Dynamic Environments

Three Experiments on Decision-making Under Uncertainty in Dynamic Environments
Author: Yaroslav Rosokha
Publisher:
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation consists of three economic experiments that investigate behavioral differences in decision making process under risk (uncertainty with known probabilities) and under ambiguity (uncertainty with unknown probabilities). The first and the second chapters present two experiments with subjects choosing between lotteries involving risky and ambiguous urns. Decisions are made in conjunction with a sequence of random draws with replacement, allowing us to track the beliefs of the agents at different moments in time. In the first chapter, we develop and estimate a model of subjective belief updating allowing for base rate fallacy. We find that when updating under ambiguity subjects significantly underweight the new signal, while when updating under compound risk subjects are essentially Bayesian. In the second chapter, we estimate a popular multiple priors model for decision making under ambiguity in dynamic environments. Our estimates suggest a difference in the confidence with which subjects discard the unlikely priors depending on whether an ambiguous urn was presented first or second. Specifically, when an ambiguous urn is presented first, subjects consider more priors during the learning process as compared to when a compound urn is presented first. We also find significant evidence against the hypothesis that human subjects consider only Dirac priors. In the third chapter, we examine the behavior of security dealers in an environment where the level of asymmetric information is viewed as either risk, compound risk, or ambiguity. Using two measures of market liquidity, resiliency and price, we find that duopoly dealer markets are both more resilient to uncertainty about asymmetric information as well as having higher dealer bids compared with monopoly dealer markets for all three uncertainty scenarios. Additionally, we find differences in dealer bidding behavior in duopoly setting depending on whether the uncertainty about informed trading is presented as risk, compound risk, or ambiguity.

Advances in Decision Making Under Risk and Uncertainty

Advances in Decision Making Under Risk and Uncertainty
Author: Mohammed Abdellaoui
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2008-08-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3540684360

Whether we like it or not we all feel that the world is uncertain. From choosing a new technology to selecting a job, we rarely know in advance what outcome will result from our decisions. Unfortunately, the standard theory of choice under uncertainty developed in the early forties and fifties turns out to be too rigid to take many tricky issues of choice under uncertainty into account. The good news is that we have now moved away from the early descriptively inadequate modeling of behavior. This book brings the reader into contact with the accomplished progress in individual decision making through the most recent contributions to uncertainty modeling and behavioral decision making. It also introduces the reader into the many subtle issues to be resolved for rational choice under uncertainty.

Models and Experiments in Risk and Rationality

Models and Experiments in Risk and Rationality
Author: Bertrand Munier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2013-03-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9401722986

Models and Experiments in Risk and Rationality presents original contributions to the areas of individual choice, experimental economics, operations and analysis, multiple criteria decision making, market uncertainty, game theory and social choice. The papers, which were presented at the FUR VI conference, are arranged to appear in order of increasing complexity of the decision environment or social context in which they situate themselves. The first section `Psychological Aspects of Risk-Bearing', considers choice at the purely individual level and for the most part, free of any specific economic or social context. The second section examines individual choice within the classical expected utility approach while the third section works from a perspective that includes non-expected utility preferences over lotteries. Section four, `Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Under Uncertainty', considers the more specialized but crucial context of uncertain choice involving tradeoffs between competing criteria -- a field which is becoming of increasing importance in applied decision analysis. The final two sections examine uncertain choice in social or group contexts.

The Power of Experiments

The Power of Experiments
Author: Michael Luca
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262542277

How tech companies like Google, Airbnb, StubHub, and Facebook learn from experiments in our data-driven world—an excellent primer on experimental and behavioral economics Have you logged into Facebook recently? Searched for something on Google? Chosen a movie on Netflix? If so, you've probably been an unwitting participant in a variety of experiments—also known as randomized controlled trials—designed to test the impact of different online experiences. Once an esoteric tool for academic research, the randomized controlled trial has gone mainstream. No tech company worth its salt (or its share price) would dare make major changes to its platform without first running experiments to understand how they would influence user behavior. In this book, Michael Luca and Max Bazerman explain the importance of experiments for decision making in a data-driven world. Luca and Bazerman describe the central role experiments play in the tech sector, drawing lessons and best practices from the experiences of such companies as StubHub, Alibaba, and Uber. Successful experiments can save companies money—eBay, for example, discovered how to cut $50 million from its yearly advertising budget—or bring to light something previously ignored, as when Airbnb was forced to confront rampant discrimination by its hosts. Moving beyond tech, Luca and Bazerman consider experimenting for the social good—different ways that governments are using experiments to influence or “nudge” behavior ranging from voter apathy to school absenteeism. Experiments, they argue, are part of any leader's toolkit. With this book, readers can become part of “the experimental revolution.”

Experiments in Economics

Experiments in Economics
Author: John Denis Hey
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1991
Genre: Decision-making
ISBN:

After a discussion of the methodological issues involved in experimental economics, the author provides accounts of particular experimental investigations covering individual and interactive behaviour and testing game and bargaining theory, decision-making under uncertainty, auctions and markets.

Decision-Making Under Risk

Decision-Making Under Risk
Author: Marcela Tarazona-Gomez
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2014
Genre:
ISBN:

Using laboratory experiments as a tool, this dissertation contributes to the debate of decision making under risk three domains : The first essay presents the results of an experiment that elicits prudence and risk aversion. We find that the majority of subjects are prudent and that a big proportion is simultaneously prudent and risk averse, even if we find no correlation between prudence and risk aversion. The second essay investigates the effect of uncertainty on the decision to finance a public good. Our theoretical prediction is that risk adverse individuals will reduce their contributions to the production of a public good when facing more uncertainty. Results reveal that this prediction is confirmed but only for economists, and that non economists rather increase their contributions. In the last essay we elicit individual preferences over social risk. We analyze if these preferences are correlated with individual preferences over individual risk and over the well-being of others. We find that social risk attitudes closely approximate individual risk attitudes.

Experiments on Decision Making and Other Studies

Experiments on Decision Making and Other Studies
Author: Donald Wayne Taylor
Publisher:
Total Pages: 126
Release: 1960
Genre: Creative ability
ISBN:

Contents: Amount and generality of information-seeking behavior in sequential decision making as dependent on level of incentive, by Donald R. Worley Maximization of utility in economic decisions under risk, by Earl B. Hunt Group and individual economic decision making in risk conditions, by E.B. Hunt and R.R. Rowe Information seeking in sequential decision making as dependent upon test anxiety and upon prior success or failure in problem solving, by John S. Roberts, Jr. Two exploratory studies of the effect of separa tion of production from evaluation of ideas, by David L. Singer A note on the reliability of five rating scales, by Donald W. Taylor.