Risk aversion and decreasing absolute risk aversion play prominent roles in the expected utility theory of demand for insurance against a known risk of accident losses. Demand for insurance against an accident risk that is not known with certainty depends on the attitude toward bearing this ambiguity as well as the underlying risk. Ambiguity aversion in the recursive model developed by Klibanof...

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...

One of the most robust empirical findings in the behavioral sciences is loss aversion--the finding that losses loom larger than gains. We offer a new psychological explanation of the origins of loss aversion in which loss aversion emerges from differences in the distribution of gains and losses people experience. In 4 experiments, we tested this proposition by manipulating the range of gains an...

We estimate 11 well-studied behavioral phenomena in a group of 190 laboratory subjects (short-term discount rates, small stakes risk aversion, present bias, loss aversion, the endowment effect, aversion to ambiguity and compound lotteries, the common ratio and common consequence effects and sender/receiver behavior in trust games). We study the joint distribution of these behaviors and compare ...

Traditionally, risk aversion (both absolute and relative) has been expressed as a function of wealth alone. The characteristics of risk aversion as wealth changes have been extensively studied. However, prices, as well as wealth, enter the indirect utility function, from which the typical risk aversion measures are calculated. Given that, changes in prices will affect risk aversion, although ex...

We estimate a variety of different economic preferences in the same group of subjects: risk aversion, discounting, ambiguity aversion, compound lottery aversion, the common ratio and common consequence effects, present bias, loss aversion, the endowment effect, the reflection effect, and behavior in trust games. This allows us to estimate the empirical relationships between these behaviors acro...

The relationship between vomiting and conditioned taste aversion was studied in intact cats and squirrel monkeys and in cats and squirrel monkeys in which the area postrema was ablated by thermal cautery. In cats conditioned 7-12 months after ablation of the area postrema, three successive treatments with xylazine failed to produce either vomiting or conditioned taste aversion to a novel fluid....

Loss aversion is the tendency to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains of the same amount. To shed light on the spatio-temporal processes underlying loss aversion, we analysed the associations between individual loss aversion and electrophysiological responses to loss and gain outcomes in a monetary gamble task. Electroencephalographic feedback-related negativity (FRN) was computed in 29 ...