The concept of a non-extreme-outcome-additive capacity (neo-additive capacity ) is introduced. Neo-additive capacities model optimistic and pessimistic attitudes towards uncertainty as observed in many experimental studies. Moreover, neo-additive capacities can be applied easily in economic problems, as we demonstrate by examples. This paper provides an axiomatisation of Choquet expected utilit...

We analyse how progressive taxation and education subsidies affect schooling decisions when the returns to education are stochastic. We use the theory of real options to solve the problem of education choice in a dynamic stochastic model. We show that education attainment will be an increasing function of the risk associated with education. Furthermore, this result holds regardless of the degre...

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a new theory of portfolio selection which is based on evolutionary reasoning in simple repeated market situations. According to this new point of view the ultimate success of a portfolio strategy is measured by the wealth share the strategy is eventually able to conquer in an evolutionary process of market selection. We identify a simple portfolio strateg...

An information transaction entails the purchase of information. Formally, it consists of an information structure together with a price. We develop an index of the appeal of information transactions, which is derived as a dual to the agent’s preferences for information. The index of information transactions has a simple analytic characterization in terms of the relative entropy from priors to p...

We show that range convexity of beliefs, a ‘technical’ condition that appears naturally in axiomatizations of preferences in a Savage-like framework, imposes some unexpected restrictions when modelling ambiguity averse preferences. That is, when it is added to a mild condition, range convexity makes the preferences collapse to subjective expected utility as soon as they satisfy structural condi...

This note explores the link between anticipated information and a preference for liquidity in investment choices. Given a subjective ordering of investment portfolios by their liquidity, we identify a sufficient condition under which the prospect of finer resolution of uncertainty creates a preference for more liquid positions. We then show how this condition might arise naturally in some stand...

We develop a behavioral axiomatic characterization of Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) under risk aversion. Given is an individual agent’s behavior in the market: assume a finite collection of asset purchases with corresponding prices. We show that such behavior satisfies a “revealed preference axiom” if and only if there exists a SEU model (a subjective probability over states and a concave u...

In the study of decision making under risk, preferences are assumed to be continuous. We present a model of discontinuous preferences over certain and uncertain outcomes. Using existing parameter estimates for certain and uncertain utility, five important decision theory phenomena are discussed: the certainty effect, experimentally observed probability weighting, the uncertainty effect, extreme...

This paper studies collective decision making in the context of a project selection model. We derive the optimal decision architecture when marginal decision costs are present, and investigate the circumstances under which the hierarchy and polyarchy exist as optimal sequential architectures. Our analysis extends previous results on optimal committee decision-making to a sequential setting, and...

Jamal and Sunder (1996) showed that the median prices in double auctions populated by zero-intelligence (ZI) traders whose trading limits are set by two biased heuristics tend to converge to the same equilibrium as if their trading limits were set by applying Bayes’ Rule. This note provides an analytical explanation of why the repeated use of biased heuristics approximates Bayes rule. JEL class...