We consider a single-period inventory model in which a risk-averse retailer faces uncertain customer demand and makes a purchasing-order-quantity and a selling-price decision with the objective of maximizing expected utility. This problem is similar to the classic newsvendor problem, except: (a) the distribution of demand is a function of the selling price, which is determined by the retailer; ...

The relationship between risk in the environment, risk aversion and inequality aversion is not well understood. Theories of fairness have typically assumed that pie sizes are known ex-ante. Pie sizes are, however, rarely known ex ante. Using two simple allocation problems—the Dictator and Ultimatum game—we explore whether, and how exactly, unknown pie sizes with varying degrees of risk (“endowm...

It’s a well known empirical fact that actual option prices show persistent and systematic deviations from Black-Scholes option values. While a substantial number of enhancements have been proposed in the literature, these approaches typically leave investor’s preferences towards risk unmodified. Recently, empirical studies using option prices find support for non-concave utility functions propo...

A finite number of heterogeneous firms facing demand-induced price fluctuations imperfectly compete for heterogeneous workers. Because firms must commit to wages and employment before the realization of product price, they exhibit a risk-averse behavior. It is then shown that unemployment may arise in equilibrium because of the combination of uncertainty on product price and mismatch between wo...

We show that differences in investors risk aversion can generate herd behavior in stock markets where assets are traded sequentially. This in turn prevents markets from being efficient in the sense that Þnancial market prices do not converge to the asset’s fundamental value. The informational efficiency of the market depends on the distribution of the risky asset across risk averse agents. Thes...