Theories of choice under risk: Insights from financial markets

To date, the plausibility of theories of choice under risk hinges are mainly on experimental evidence. This paper devises and implements an approach amenable of assessing the performance of three families of models (expected utility, rank-dependent expected utility, and the cumulative prospect theory) using information from financial asset markets. Our findings unequivocally support reference-point dependence, diminishing marginal sensitivity, loss aversion, and nonlinear weighting of (gain and loss) physical probabilities. The empirical observations are found to be robust to, inter alia, the parameterization of the utility and probability weighting functions, “day-of-the-week effects”, the choice of a reference point, and the introduction of possible, low-probability market crashes (peso component).     

Risk Attitudes of Children and Adults: Choices Over Small and Large Probability Gains and Losses

In this paper we examine how risk attitudes change with age. We present participants from age 5 to 64 with choices between simple gambles and the expected value of the gambles. The gambles are over both gains and losses, and vary in the probability of the non-zero payoff. Surprisingly, we find that many participants are risk seeking when faced with high-probability prospects over gains and risk averse when faced with small-probability prospects. Over losses we find the exact opposite. Children's choices are consistent with the underweighting of low-probability events and the overweighting of high-probability ones. This tendency diminishes with age, and on average adults appear to use the objective probability when evaluating risky prospects.     

Normative ecological rationality: normative rationality in the fast-and-frugal-heuristics research program

The purpose of this paper is to examine the normative interpretation of the fast-and-frugal research program and in particular to contrast it with the normative reading of rational choice theory and behavioral economics. The ecological rationality of fast-and-frugal heuristics is admittedly a form of normative naturalism (Gigerenzer and Sturm 2012) – it derives what agents “ought” to do from that which “is” ecologically rational – and the paper will examine how this differs from the normative rationality associated with rational choice theory. I will also attempt to assess the relative adequacy of normative ecological rationality.     

Ambiguity Made Precise: A Comparative Foundation

The theory of subjective expected utility has been recently extended to allow ambiguity to matter for choice. We propose a notion of absolute ambiguity aversion by building on a notion of comparative ambiguity aversion. We characterize it for a preference model which encompasses some of the most popular models in the literature. We next build on these ideas to provide a definition of unambiguous act and event and show the characterization of the latter. As an illustration, we consider the classical Ellsberg 3-color urn problem and find that the notions developed in the paper provide intuitive answers. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: D81.     

A New Look at the High School Economics Texts

Townshend-Zellner shows that, as a group, high school economics texts have improved substantially during the last decade. “It is now possible,” he asserts, “to recommend to high schools a significant number of texts … which substantially meet the minimum criteria set by the canons of our professional discipline.” There are still problems, however, in that “… the quality of the acceptable texts now runs strongly ahead of the typical teacher's preparation in economics.”     

Iso-risk: an analysis of risk-taking in fixed income markets

We test the hypothesis that portfolio managers trade-off variance and kurtosis in asset returns. We find empirical evidence that supports the iso-risk hypothesis using fixed income mutual fund data. Managers appear to systematically ‘swing for the fences’ when the probability of outperformance is low. This resolves previous enigmas of preference reversals and adheres to both Prospect Theory and tournament effects. The methodology developed enables reconciliation of active return metrics and managers’ total return behaviour. As the data set includes the great recession, we provide an economic interpretation of the results in light of the trade-off hypothesis.     

Modeling Student Subject Choice at Secondary and Tertiary Level: A Cross-Section Study

Cross-section data on secondary level student choices provide evidence on factors influencing the decision to study economics. Such evidence makes a key contribution to the broader debates on why student numbers have been falling in economics and why women are reluctant economists. Greater mathematical aptitude and prior knowledge of the subject influence the decision to study economics, and a significant effect is attributable to relative underachievement in economics. There are also significant peer group and teacher effects. Female students are more likely to study economics when there is a critical mass of women studying the subject. There is a positive role model effect of female teachers—although this does not carry over to the decision to continue with economics at the university.     

Anchored preference relations

This note explores the implications of a simple and intuitive restriction on reference-dependent preferences assuming the status quo serves as the reference point. The condition imposed potentially rules out situations in which a decision maker has a choice between two prospects, selects one which subsequently becomes the new reference point, and then regrets her initial choice. It is shown that a surprising number of models in a riskless and risky setting violate this behavioral assumption, including Cumulative Prospect Theory as well as any theory exhibiting local non-satiation in which all reference-dependent indifference surfaces are smooth. It is also shown that the condition does admit a class of non-trivial reference-dependent preferences.     

Expected utility theory with imprecise probability perception: explaining preference reversals

This article presents a new model for decision-making under risk, which provides an explanation for empirically-observed preference reversals. Central to the theory is the incorporation of probability perception imprecision, which arises because of individuals’ vague understanding of numerical probabilities. We combine this concept with the use of the Alpha EU model and construct a simple model which helps us to understand anomalies, such as preference reversals and valuation gaps, discovered in the experimental economics literature, that standard models cannot explain.     

Monetary Policy Shocks and Heterogeneous Finance Decisions: A Model of Hidden Effort Choice and Financial Intermediation

Abstract. The paper investigates how monetary policy shocks influence the composition of firms' external finance given that firms are heterogeneous. Heterogeneity stems from differences in the availability of internal funds and in the monitoring costs associated with bank finance. These costs are determined by the intensity of the lending relationship. By using a delegated monitoring approach it is found that bank loans serve as a substitute for internal funds if the lending relationship is sufficiently close. Moreover, banks with strong credit ties to their customers are not only able to protect borrowers from liquidity constraints following a monetary tightening but are even able to extend their business lending.     

The Right Choice at the Right Time: A Herding Experiment in Endogenous Time

Herding describes the phenomenon in decision-making where an economic agent disregards his own private information to follow the actions of his predecessors as in Banerjee (1992). With later decision-makers simply copying earlier decisions their private information cannot be inferred by other decision-makers and will be forever lost. There is some experimental evidence on simple sequential herding of this type in the literature, notably Anderson and Holt (1997). This paper differs by allowing subjects to delay their decision-making in order to benefit from observing others' actions as in more recent herding models such as Chamley and Gale (1994). The results in this paper suggest that subjects will indeed delay when their private information is not sufficiently strong. Despite this ability to wait, as predicted in the theoretical literature, cascades remained ubiquitous and more worrying still, reverse-cascades occurred in which incorrect decisions made by early decision-makers produced informational cascades on the wrong action. In an alternative design, informing subjects that they had made incorrect choices only made matters worse as subjects moved further away from rational behavior.     

董监高任职网络如何助推企业技术创新——基于同群效应视角

基于同群效应理论视角构建董监高任职网络,利用2010—2021年沪深A股上市公司样本,研究焦点企业的技术创新行为是否受到同群企业技术创新的影响,即董监高任职网络中是否存在企业技术创新同群效应,并进一步分析传导机制。研究结果表明：第一,同群企业的技术创新对焦点企业技术创新有显著促进作用。第二,同群企业技术创新通过激发焦点企业创新动机、优化焦点企业创新过程来促进焦点企业创新。第三,由于基于网络关联的内部信息渠道与外部信息渠道存在替代关系,董监高任职网络中的同群效应在外部信息环境较差时发挥更大作用。本文基于新的网络视角深化和丰富了企业创新同群效应及其机制研究,为创新重要性日益突出、企业联结日益密切背景下的企业技术创新提供了政策新思路。