We model a risk-averse newsvendor’s decision-making behavior with some commonly used classes of utility functions within the expected utility theory (EUT) framework. Under fairly general conditions of EUT, we show that a risk-averse newsvendor will order less than an arbitrarily small quantity as selling price gets larger if price is higher than a threshold value, i.e., the optimal order quanti...

This work empirically assesses the degree to which inventory decisions made by entrepreneurs and small businesses are informed by the logic underlying the newsvendor or base stock model and are influenced by the decision-maker’s risk profile. We used a weband email-based survey, combined with a telephone follow-up to elicit risk profiles, obtaining 51 usable responses. Our findings suggest that...

We consider a multi-product newsvendor using an exponential utility function. We first establish a few basic properties for the newsvendor regarding the convexity of the model and monotonicity of the impact of risk aversion on the solution. When the product demands are independent and the ratio of the degree of risk aversion to the number of products is sufficiently small, we obtain closed-form...

Many subjects in lab experiments show considerable risk aversion in small-stakes gambles. This is counter to the predictions of expected utility theory for any reasonable degree of risk aversion (Rabin 2000) but is consistent with loss aversion in prospect theory. Benjamin, Brown, and Shapiro (forthcoming) show that math skills reduce small-stakes risk aversion, consistent with broader evidence...

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; ...

This paper explores whether there is one unifying concept of utility, as commonly assumed in applied and empirical economics, or whether utility is context-specific, as typically assumed in economic theory. We present a new method to measure the utility for gains, the utility for losses, and loss aversion both for risk and for time. Utility under risk was significantly more curved than utility ...

conjunctive use of ground and surface water can increase reliability of the water supply by providing independent sources. in this study, corrected utility-efficient pro-gramming that allows for more than one seasonal irrigation depth for each crop was used to determine the amount of utility maximizing investment in the well capacity for conjunctive use. results showed that optimum investment a...

We analyze an extension of the classical multi-period, single-item, linear cost inventory problem where the objective function is a coherent risk measure. Properties of coherent risk measures allow us to offer a unifying treatment of risk averse and min–max type formulations. For the single period newsvendor problem, we show that the structure of the optimal solution of the risk averse model is...

This paper characterizes the conditions for risk aversion in cumulative prospect theory where risk aversion is defined in the strong sense of Rothschild and Stiglitz (1970). Under weaker assumptions than differentiability we show that risk aversion implies convex weighting functions for gains and for losses but not necessarily a concave utility function. Also, we investigate the exact relations...

In the newsvendor problem, a decision maker chooses an inventory order quantity prior to the realization of a random demand. The decision maker faces a trade-off between ordering too many and having leftover inventory versus ordering too few and missing out on potential sales. Keeping the net profit structure constant, we study how the timing of the payments affects the inventory decisions. Spe...