Recent work in the real options approach to investment has argued that firms face significant opportunity costs when entry costs are largely irreversible, and these costs equal the value of an option to defer investment. This study seeks to examine empirically these claims by investigating the interactive effects of uncertainty and irreversibility on the likelihood of entry into new business by...

Affective decision-making is a strategic model of choice under risk and uncertainty where we posit two cognitive processes — the "rational" and the "emotional" process. Observed choice is the result of equilibirum in this intrapersonal game. As an example, we present applications of affective decision-making in insurance markets, where the risk perceptions of consumers are endogenous. We then d...

Let X be a compact, or path-connected, metric space whose topological dimension is at least 2. We show that there does not exist a continuous choice function (i.e., single-valued choice correspondence) defined on the collection of all finite feasible sets in X. Not to be void of content, therefore, a revealed preference theory in the context of most infinite consumption spaces must either relin...

This paper compares Bayesian decision theory with robust decision theory where the decision maker optimizes with respect to the worst state realization. For a class of robust decision problems there exists a sequence of Bayesian decision problems whose solution converges towards the robust solution. It is shown that the limiting Bayesian problem displays infinite risk aversion and that decision...

There are typically multiple equilibrium outcomes in the Crawford-Sobel (CS) model of strategic information transmission. This paper identifies a simple condition on equilibrium payoffs, called NITS, that selects among CS equilibria. Under a commonly used regularity condition, only the equilibrium with the maximal number of induced actions satisfies NITS. We discuss various justifications for N...

We analyze a sequential decision model with one-sided commitment in which decision makers are allowed to choose the time of acting (exercising a risky investment option A) or waiting. We characterize information cascade under endogenous ordering and show that with endogenous ordering, if the number of decision makers is large and decision makers are patient enough, at any fixed time, nearly all...

Research into accounting risk-return relations largely relied on reference-based models of managerial choice. This focus ignores other explanations that may contribute to our understanding. Our study extends prior research by incorporating agency theory and implicit contracts theory into models based on the behavioral theory of the firm. We test our hypotheses in a large sample of US manufactur...

In the context of finite normal form games, this paper addresses the formalization and implications of the hypothesis that players are rational and that this is common knowledge. The innovation is to admit notions of rationality other than subjective expected utility maximization. For example, rationality can be defined by the alternative restrictions that preferences are probabilistically soph...

The number of Internet news media outlets has grown rapidly in recent years. This paper analyzes the effects of media proliferation on electoral outcomes and social welfare. We assume voters are information-seeking but choose outlets that are excessively partisan given the voters’ own ideological preferences, due to quasi-rationality. We find that if voters who think (correctly or not) that the...

This paper considers the problem of a risk-neutral firm offering a gamble to consumers with preferences given by prospect theory. Under conditions satisfied by virtually all functional forms used in the literature, firms can extract arbitrarily high expected values from consumers. Moreover, for any given lottery, there exists another lottery that makes both the firm and the consumer better off....