IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cca/wpaper/404.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the impossibility of protecting risk-takers

Author

Listed:
  • Toomas Hinnosaar

Abstract

Risk-neutral sellers can extract high profits from risk-loving buyers by selling them lotteries. To limit this problem, gambling is heavily regulated in most countries. I show that protecting risk-loving buyers against profit-maximizing sellers is essentially impossible. Even if buyers are risk-loving in the weakest sense, the seller can construct a nonrandom winner-pays auction that ensures unbounded profits. The result holds even if the seller cannot use any mechanism that resembles a lottery and only requires that buyers are asymptotically risk loving. This condition is satisfied, for example, when preferences satisfy Savage’s axioms or with prospect theory preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Toomas Hinnosaar, 2015. "On the impossibility of protecting risk-takers," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 404, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    • Handle: RePEc:cca:wpaper:404
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.carloalberto.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/no.404.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carbajal, Juan Carlos & Ely, Jeffrey C., 2016. "A model of price discrimination under loss aversion and state-contingent reference points," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(2), May.
    2. Matthews, Steven A., 1983. "Selling to risk averse buyers with unobservable tastes," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 370-400, August.
    3. Azevedo, Eduardo M. & Gottlieb, Daniel, 2012. "Risk-neutral firms can extract unbounded profits from consumers with prospect theory preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 1291-1299.
    4. Subir Bose & Ludovic Renou, 2014. "Mechanism Design With Ambiguous Communication Devices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(5), pages 1853-1872, September.
    5. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Riley, John G & Samuelson, William F, 1981. "Optimal Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 381-392, June.
    7. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    8. Marc Rieger & Mei Wang, 2006. "Cumulative prospect theory and the St. Petersburg paradox," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 28(3), pages 665-679, August.
    9. De Giorgi, Enrico & Hens, Thorsten & Rieger, Marc Oliver, 2010. "Financial market equilibria with cumulative prospect theory," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(5), pages 633-651, September.
    10. Alfredo Di Tillio & Nenad Kos & Matthias Messner, 2012. "The Design of Ambiguous Mechanisms," Working Papers 446, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    11. Sebastian Ebert & Philipp Strack, 2015. "Until the Bitter End: On Prospect Theory in a Dynamic Context," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(4), pages 1618-1633, April.
    12. Maskin, Eric S & Riley, John G, 1984. "Optimal Auctions with Risk Averse Buyers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1473-1518, November.
    13. repec:oup:restud:v:84:y::i:1:p:237-276. is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Drazen Prelec, 1998. "The Probability Weighting Function," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(3), pages 497-528, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roland Eisenhuth, 2019. "Reference-dependent mechanism design," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(1), pages 77-103, May.
    2. Andrew M. Davis & Elena Katok & Anthony M. Kwasnica, 2011. "Do Auctioneers Pick Optimal Reserve Prices?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(1), pages 177-192, January.
    3. Shunda, Nicholas, 2009. "Auctions with a buy price: The case of reference-dependent preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 645-664, November.
    4. Hu, Audrey & Offerman, Theo & Zou, Liang, 2011. "Premium auctions and risk preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2420-2439.
    5. Giuseppe Lopomo, 2004. "Optimality and Robustness of the English Auction," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000391, UCLA Department of Economics.
    6. Anne Épaulard & Jean-Pierre Laffargue & Pierre Malgrange, 2008. "Présentation générale," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(2), pages 1-13.
    7. J.M.J. Delnoij & K.J.M. De Jaegher, 2016. "Competing first-price and second-price auctions," Working Papers 16-07, Utrecht School of Economics.
    8. Cox, James C. & Sadiraj, Vjollca, 2006. "Small- and large-stakes risk aversion: Implications of concavity calibration for decision theory," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 45-60, July.
    9. Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt & Mats Köster, 2020. "Salience and Skewness Preferences [Risk-neutral Firms can Extract Unbounded Profits from Consumers with Prospect Theory Preferences]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(5), pages 2057-2107.
    10. Englmaier, Florian & Schmöller, Arno, 2010. "Determinants and Effects of Reserve Prices in Hattrick Auctions," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 326, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    11. Söllner, Matthias, 2008. "Menschliches Verhalten in elektronischen Märkten," Bayreuth Reports on Information Systems Management 34, University of Bayreuth, Chair of Information Systems Management.
    12. Jofre-Bonet, Mireia & Pesendorfer, Martin, 2014. "Optimal sequential auctions," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 61-71.
    13. Lopomo, Giuseppe, 1998. "The English Auction Is Optimal Among Simple Sequential Auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 144-166, September.
    14. Li, Huagang & Riley, John G., 2007. "Auction choice," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 1269-1298, December.
    15. , & , & ,, 2006. "Optimal auctions with ambiguity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(4), pages 411-438, December.
    16. Joyce Delnoij & Kris Jaegher, 2020. "Competing first-price and second-price auctions," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(1), pages 183-216, February.
    17. Baisa, Brian, 2017. "Auction design without quasilinear preferences," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(1), January.
    18. Page Jr., Frank H., 1998. "Existence of optimal auctions in general environments," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 389-418, May.
    19. Lopomo, Giuseppe, 2001. "Optimality and Robustness of the English Auction," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 219-240, August.
    20. Timothy P. Hubbard & Harry J. Paarsch, 2012. "On the Numerical Solution of Equilibria in Auction Models with Asymmetries within the Private-Values Paradigm," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 291, Collegio Carlo Alberto.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    risk-loving agents; auctions; gambling; prospect theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cca:wpaper:404. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Giovanni Bert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fccaait.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.