On Microfoundations of the Dual Theory of Choice

We show that Yaari's dual theory of choice under risk may be derived as an indirect utility when a risk-neutral agent faces financial imperfections. We consider an agent that maximizes expected discounted cash flows under a bid-ask spread in the credit market. It turns out that the agent evaluates lotteries as if she were maximizing Yaari's dual utility function. We also generalize the dual theory of choice for unbounded lotteries.     

A public good model with lotteries in large groups

We analyze the effect of a large group on a public goods model with lotteries. We show that as populations get large, and with preferences in which people only care about their private consumptions and the total supply of the public good, the level of contributions converges to the one given by voluntary contributions. With altruistic preferences of the warm-glow type, the contributions converge to a level strictly higher than those given by voluntary contributions, but in general they do not yield first-best levels. Our results are important to clarify why in general governments do not rely on lotteries for a large part of the revenue creation for public good provision. They are also useful to understand why lottery proceeds are earmarked to worthy causes, where warm glow is likely to be larger.     

Competition for visibility: When do (FX) signal providers employ lotteries?

We argue that certain currency pairs, similar to stocks, are perceived and employed as gambling opportunities. We define currency pairs with extreme positive daily returns as lotteries. By analyzing data from a popular foreign exchange focused social trading platform, we provide empirical evidence of a U-shaped relationship between previous relative trader performance and the traded lottery share: Traders with bad performance and traders with good performance, in comparison to their peers, are more prone to gamble, i.e. trade a higher monthly share of lotteries. Regarding both sides of the relative performance spectrum, we link our results to well-documented behavioral phenomena. Furthermore, we relate our results to remuneration design features common to social trading, where only outperformers gain visibility and may become eligible for receiving compensation form the platform vendor. In consequence, especially signal providers at the lower end of the performance spectrum are incentivized to gamble; after (repeatedly) performing poorly, traders might be willing to take gambles for a small chance to get a declining account back on track.     

Who Gambles in the Stock Market?

This study shows that the propensity to gamble and investment decisions are correlated. At the aggregate level, individual investors prefer stocks with lottery features, and like lottery demand, the demand for lottery-type stocks increases during economic downturns. In the cross-section, socioeconomic factors that induce greater expenditure in lotteries are associated with greater investment in lottery-type stocks. Further, lottery investment levels are higher in regions with favorable lottery environments. Because lottery-type stocks underperform, gambling-related underperformance is greater among low-income investors who excessively overweight lottery-type stocks. These results indicate that state lotteries and lottery-type stocks attract very similar socioeconomic clienteles.     

The valuation of nonsystematic risks and the pricing of Swedish lottery bonds

Swedish government lottery bonds have coupon payments determinedby lottery. They offer a unique opportunity to study a securitywith uncertain payoffs having a known, observable distribution.The risk associated with the lotteries is idiosyncratic by constructionand should not command a risk premium in equilibrium. The bondsare traded in two forms, allowing us to evaluate the rewardsto bearing extra lottery risk. Despite its idiosyncratic nature,we find prices appear to reflect aversion to this risk. We evaluatethe empirical determinants of this differential pricing andpossible explanations for it.     

Welfare effects of insurance contract non-performance

Non-performance lies at the heart of much of the regulation that insurance companies face. Consumers’ concerns about non-performance of the insurance provider have also been cited as a possible explanation for low demand of microinsurance. We provide a behavioral evaluation of the welfare effects of non-performance risk. We test the hypothesis that the presence of non-performance risk negatively impacts not just take-up of insurance but more importantly the welfare of the insured. We also test if violations of the reduction of compound lotteries axiom could drive this decrease in take-up and welfare. The results show that the compound risk characteristic of non-performance risk does not significantly decrease the welfare of insurance choices made by individuals. This counter-intuitive result is sensitive to the structural modeling of risk preferences. If one assumes the reduction of compound lotteries axiom does characterize behavior towards risk, one finds evidence that non-performance risk reduces welfare for the insured. But if one correctly allows for violations in that axiom in the representation of risk preferences, which is appropriate if one is going to test for the effect of compound risk from non-performance, then the counter-intuitive result is obtained. Take-up is not a reliable proxy for welfare, and the behavioral drivers of take-up are again not the same drivers of welfare. These results provide structural behavioral insight to inform normative policy design with respect to insurance regulation.     

Does charitable gambling crowd out charitable donations? Using matching to analyze a policy reform

The impact of charitable lotteries on charitable donations depends on the motives of charitable donations, and is thus more an empirical question. Utilizing the propensity score matching method to overcome sample selection bias, this study estimates the effect of lotto outlays on direct charitable donations based on Taiwan’s experience of introducing a lottery in 2002. We find that people’s lottery spending neither crowds out nor crowds in charitable donations after the control group for lottery players is matched by propensity scores. The evidence thus suggests that people are more concerned about how they make their donations.     

Taxes, benefits, and careers: Complete versus incomplete markets

An incomplete-market life-cycle model with indivisible labor makes career lengths and human capital accumulation respond to labor tax rates and government supplied non-employment benefits. We compare aggregate and individual outcomes in this individualistic incomplete-market model with those in a comparable collectivist representative-family model with employment lotteries and complete-insurance markets. The incomplete- and complete-market structures assign leisure to different types of individuals who are distinguished by their human capital and age. These microeconomic differences distinguish the two models in terms of how macroeconomic aggregates respond to some types of government supplied non-employment benefits, but remarkably, not to labor tax changes.     

Understanding European unemployment with a representative family model

A representative family model with indivisible labor and employment lotteries has no labor market frictions and complete markets. Nevertheless, its aggregate responses to an increase in government supplied unemployment insurance (UI) and to an increase in microeconomic turbulence are qualitatively similar to those in two macromodels with labor market frictions and incomplete markets, namely, the matching and search-island models in Ljungqvist and Sargent [2007a. Understanding European unemployment with matching and search-island models. Journal of Monetary Economics, this issue]. Because there is no frictional unemployment in the representative family model, an increase in employment protection (EP) decreases aggregate work because the representative family substitutes leisure for work, an effect opposite to what occurs in matching and search-island models. Heterogeneity among workers highlights the economy-wide coordination in labor supply and consumption sharing that employment lotteries and complete markets achieve in the representative family model. A high disutility of labor makes generous UI cause very low employment levels.     

Evaluating lotteries,risks, and risk‐mitigation programs

Two experiments were designed to explore the existence of systematic differences in risk perceptions and risk attitudes between Chinese and US participants. The first experiment involved ranking monetary lotteries using measures of perceived riskiness and willingness to pay (WTP). Several simple heuristics were evaluated to predict perceived riskiness and WTP. Using WTP responses, Cumulative Prospect Theory functions were determined for participants from both countries. The second experiment involved ranking multi‐attribute real‐world risks and associated risk‐mitigation programs using measures of concern and preference, respectively. Compared to their US counterparts, Chinese participants are found to be less risk averse, more concerned about risks with higher catastrophic potential, and more in favor of risk‐mitigation programs with greater scope of benefit. The results also reveal higher within‐group agreement by Chinese participants for all tasks. For both national groups, the within‐group agreement was highest when ranking risk‐mitigation programs, but lowest when ranking lotteries with negative expected value. The implications of cross‐cultural versus cross‐task variation are discussed.     

Aggregate implications of indivisible labor, incomplete markets, and labor market frictions

We study the impact of tax and transfer programs on steady-state allocations in a model with search frictions, an operative labor supply margin, and incomplete markets. In a benchmark model that has indivisible labor and incomplete markets but no trading frictions we show that the aggregate effects of taxes are identical to those in the economy with employment lotteries, though individual employment and asset dynamics can be different. The effect of frictions on the response of aggregate hours to a permanent tax change is highly nonlinear. There is considerable scope for substitution between “voluntary” and “frictional” nonemployment in some situations.     

Optimal tax policy and expected longevity: a mean and variance utility approach

This paper studies the normative problem of redistribution between agents who can influence their survival probability through private health spending, but who differ in their attitude towards the risks involved in the lotteries of life to be chosen. For that purpose, a two-period model is developed, where agents’ preferences on lotteries of life can be represented by a mean and variance utility function allowing, unlike the expected utility form, some sensitivity to what Allais (Econometrica 21(4), 503–546, 1953) calls the ‘dispersion of psychological values’. It is shown that if agents ignore the impact of health spending on the return of their savings, the decentralization of the first-best utilitarian optimum requires intergroup lump sum transfers and group-specific positive taxes on health spending. Under asymmetric information, a differentiated taxation across agents is still required, but subsidizing health spending may be optimal as a way to solve the incentive problem.     

A model of (the threat of) counterfeiting

A simple matching-model of money with the potential for counterfeiting is constructed. In contrast to the existing literature, lotteries are included. These provide scope for the operation of the intuitive criterion of Cho and Kreps. The application of that refinement is shown to imply that there is no equilibrium with counterfeiting. If the cost of producing counterfeits is low enough, then there is no monetary equilibrium. Otherwise, there is a monetary equilibrium without counterfeiting. In other words, the threat of counterfeiting can eliminate the monetary equilibrium.     

Subjective evaluation of delayed risky outcomes for buying and selling positions: the behavioral approach

This paper analyzes time discounting as a function of risk, using reservation prices. Based on experimental data, we compare bidder reservation prices for riskless assets with those for risky assets. The experiments rely on a second price auction with real monetary incentives and real delay in payoffs. We estimate the pure time discount rate for different maturities, considering riskless assets (bonds) and risky assets (delayed lotteries). An innovation in the experimental design allows disentangling pure time from pure risk discounting effects. If subjects bid for assets, we find implied discount rates for risky assets to be uniformly lower than those for riskless assets, across all maturities (the risk moderation effect). However, there is no risk moderation effect if subjects quote ask prices. We argue that delaying a payoff has a stronger effect on the price of bonds than on the price of risky assets since, in the case of bonds, the investor moves from a position of certainty to a position of risk, or uncertainty. Our findings on the risk moderation effect may be used to explain the attractiveness of compensation contracts with options, as commonly used in the financial industry.     

IPO first‐day returns: Skewness preference,investor sentiment and uncertainty underlying factors

In this paper, we investigate the initial public offering (IPO) first-day returns. Our focus is to examine the irrational component of the agent behavior towards IPO lotteries. Based on 234 French IPOs performed between 2002 and 2012, we find that IPOs with high initial returns have higher idiosyncratic skewness, turnover and momentum. This finding provides empirical evidence for investors' preference for stocks with lottery-like features and investor sentiment. In addition, we show that the skewness preference and the investor sentiment effect are stronger during periods of favorable market conditions. Our results are robust to the integration of uncertainty underlying factors.     

Financial instruments with sports betting components: Marketing gimmick or a domain for behavioral finance?

We examine theoretically and experimentally a certain class of new financial instruments which are designed as lotteries on the outcome of prominent sports events like the Soccer World Cup 2006. From a theoretical point of view, sports betting products may be superior to a fixed rate investment because of heterogeneous expectations, risk-loving behavior of investors or additional non-monetary utility components. In comparison to the direct placement of bets at bookmakers’, sports betting products may be preferable in cases of hedonic framing. Our experimental section, however, reveals the limited practical relevance of these theoretical arguments for “average” decision makers. Despite this, financial instruments with sports betting components offer a certain profit potential due to the diversity of preferences across individuals. Summarizing, the issuance of sports betting products may actually be mainly driven by marketing aspects, nevertheless sports betting products may be considered to be “viable” niche products with low cost of capital for banks.     

Implicit attitudes toward risk: the construction and validation of the measurement method

Methods that are typically used to examine individual differences in risk attitudes (e.g. lotteries, dilemmas, questionnaires) require participants to explicitly declare their willingness to take risk. Therefore, they may be biased by the need for self-presentation or situational characteristics such as time pressure and cognitive constraints that lead to more spontaneous and automatic processing of risk-related information. The aim of this study was to construct an indirect measure of risk attitudes that is free of these methodological limitations. The method based on the Implicit Association Test shows high internal reliability and satisfactory stability over time. It correlates moderately with different explicit measures of risk attitudes that are related to sensation seeking. Finally, it is characterized by a high predictive power. Adding the implicit measure to the set of independent variables representing declarative evaluations of risk attitudes significantly improved the model predicting risky real-life behavior. We argue that the indirect assessment of risk attitudes presented in this paper may be used as an universal measure of people’s risk propensity that is free of biases related to self-presentation and situational factors.     

Communication in Private-Information Models: Theory and Computation

Communication and no-communication versions of a two-stage principal-agent model are compared. The models contain a risk-averse agent and two sources of private information, a shock to preferences followed by a productive action. Both models are formulated as linear programs, which are then used to compute solutions to examples. For the communication model, an alternative method of accounting for the utility from off-equilibrium strategies is derived. This method greatly reduces the size of the linear program. For the no-communication model a Revelation-Principle like proof is provided. In simple cases, a sufficient condition for communication to be valuable is derived. In these cases, communication improves risk-sharing in bad states of the world. In more complicated cases, computed examples demonstrate how communication may also alter labor supply. Further examples demonstrate how action and consumption lotteries may separate agents by their shock.