A representation theorem for guilt aversion

Testing guilt aversion

Guilt averse individuals experience a utility loss if they believe they let someone down. In particular, generosity depends on what the donor believes that the recipient expects to receive. In experimental work, several authors have identified a positive correlation between such second-order donor beliefs and generous behavior, as predicted by the guilt aversion hypothesis. However, the correla...

A note on testing guilt aversion

Risk Aversion and Coherent Risk Measures: a Spectral Representation Theorem

We study a space of coherent risk measures Mφ obtained as certain expansions of coherent elementary basis measures. In this space, the concept of “Risk Aversion Function” φ naturally arises as the spectral representation of each risk measure in a space of functions of confidence level probabilities. We give necessary and sufficient conditions on φ for Mφ to be a coherent measure. We find in thi...

Measuring nonlinear and heterogeneous guilt aversion ”

Recent experiments suggest that people’s preferences not only depend on their choices but also on their beliefs of other people’s choices and on their beliefs of other people’s beliefs. Guilt aversion is such belief-dependent preference that has received a lot of attention recently. An individual is considered to be guilt averse if he gets a negative utility from failing to live up to the belie...

Incomplete-Information Models of Guilt Aversion in the Trust Game

In the theory of psychological games it is assumed that players’preferences on material consequences depend on endogenous beliefs. Most of the applications of this theoretical framework assume that the psychological utility functions representing such preferences are common knowledge. But this is often unrealistic. In particular, it cannot be true in experimental games where players are subject...