IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crf/wpaper/10-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s‘Essays on Moral Arithmetic’

Author

Listed:
  • Tibor Neugebauer

    (Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg)

  • John Hey

    (University of York)

  • Carmen Pasca

    (LUISS)

Abstract

We offer a translation into English of the original French version published in 1777 of Buffon’s Essai d’Arithmetique Morale along with some introductory remarks. In this classic work, Buffon discusses degrees of certainty, probability, the moral value of money, the different evaluations of gains and of losses; moreover, he proposes repeated experiments to determine the moral value of a game. Our hope is that this remarkable work, which anticipates and relates to many aspects discussed in more recent literature, reaches a broader audience than the French original reaches today. Our belief is that we are first to translate this classic work completely.

Suggested Citation

  • Tibor Neugebauer & John Hey & Carmen Pasca, 2010. "Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s‘Essays on Moral Arithmetic’," LSF Research Working Paper Series 10-06, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:crf:wpaper:10-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lsf.lu/eng/content/download/1792/8933/file/10-06.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reinhard Selten & Abdolkarim Sadrieh & Klaus Abbink, 1999. "Money Does Not Induce Risk Neutral Behavior, but Binary Lotteries Do even Worse," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 213-252, June.
    2. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    3. Reinhard Selten & Thorsten Chmura, 2008. "Stationary Concepts for Experimental 2x2-Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 938-966, June.
    4. Tibor Neugebauer, 2010. "Moral Impossibility in the Petersburg Paradox : A Literature Survey and Experimental Evidence," LSF Research Working Paper Series 10-14, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    5. Neugebauer, Tibor & Selten, Reinhard, 2006. "Individual behavior of first-price auctions: The importance of information feedback in computerized experimental markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 183-204, January.
    6. Sauermann Heinz, 1967. "Experimentelle Wirtschaftsforschung," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 180(1), pages 299-312, February.
    7. Reinhard Selten, 1998. "Axiomatic Characterization of the Quadratic Scoring Rule," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 43-61, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tibor Neugebauer, 2010. "Moral Impossibility in the Petersburg Paradox : A Literature Survey and Experimental Evidence," LSF Research Working Paper Series 10-14, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    2. Robert William, Vivian, 2013. "Ending the myth of the St Petersburg paradox," MPRA Paper 50515, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Diecidue, Enrico & Wakker, Peter P., 2002. "Dutch books: avoiding strategic and dynamic complications, and a comonotonic extension," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 135-149, March.
    2. Edward Cartwright & Anna Stepanova, 2017. "Efficiency in a forced contribution threshold public good game," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 46(4), pages 1163-1191, November.
    3. Thomas Kourouxous & Thomas Bauer, 2019. "Violations of dominance in decision-making," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 12(1), pages 209-239, April.
    4. Christian Seidl, 2013. "The St. Petersburg Paradox at 300," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 247-264, June.
    5. Pope, Robin & Selten, Reinhard, 2009. "Risk in a Simple Temporal Framework for Expected Utility Theory and for SKAT, the Stages of Knowledge Ahead Theory," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 27/2009, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    6. Bleichrodt, Han & Eeckhoudt, Louis, 2006. "Survival risks, intertemporal consumption, and insurance: The case of distorted probabilities," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 335-346, April.
    7. Tavoni, Alessandro, 2009. "Incorporating Fairness Motives into the Impulse Balance Equilibrium and Quantal Response Equilibrium Concepts: An Application to 2x2 Games," Sustainable Development Papers 50740, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    8. James C. Cox & Eike B. Kroll & Marcel Lichters & Vjollca Sadiraj & Bodo Vogt, 2019. "The St. Petersburg paradox despite risk-seeking preferences: an experimental study," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 12(1), pages 27-44, April.
    9. Arthur Carvalho, 2015. "Tailored proper scoring rules elicit decision weights," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 10(1), pages 86-96, January.
    10. Cabrales, Antonio & Garcia-Fontes, Walter & Motta, Massimo, 2000. "Risk dominance selects the leader: An experimental analysis," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 137-162, January.
    11. Karl Schlag & James Tremewan & Joël Weele, 2015. "A penny for your thoughts: a survey of methods for eliciting beliefs," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(3), pages 457-490, September.
    12. Peter Wakker & Veronika Köbberling & Christiane Schwieren, 2007. "Prospect-theory’s Diminishing Sensitivity Versus Economics’ Intrinsic Utility of Money: How the Introduction of the Euro can be Used to Disentangle the Two Empirically," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 63(3), pages 205-231, November.
    13. Galarza, Francisco & Power, Mauricio, 2012. "Economía experimental: Nuevas metodologías para analizar el comportamiento individual [Experimental Economics: New Methodologies to Analyze the Individual Behavior]," MPRA Paper 114877, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Daniel Muller & Tshilidzi Marwala, 2019. "Relative Net Utility and the Saint Petersburg Paradox," Papers 1910.09544, arXiv.org, revised May 2020.
    15. Todd Guilfoos & Andreas Duus Pape, 2020. "Estimating Case-Based Learning," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-25, September.
    16. Kirchkamp, O. & Reiss, J.P. & Sadrieh, A., 2008. "A pure variation of risk in private-value auctions," Research Memorandum 050, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    17. Sebastian J. Goerg & Tibor Neugebauer & Abdolkarim Sadrieh, 2016. "Impulse Response Dynamics in Weakest Link Games," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 17(3), pages 284-297, August.
    18. Harrison, Glenn W. & Martínez-Correa, Jimmy & Swarthout, J. Todd, 2014. "Eliciting subjective probabilities with binary lotteries," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 128-140.
    19. Doctor, Jason N. & Bleichrodt, Han & Miyamoto, John & Temkin, Nancy R. & Dikmen, Sureyya, 2004. "A new and more robust test of QALYs," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 353-367, March.
    20. Pope, Robin & Selten, Reinhard, 2009. "Risk and Expected Utility Theory," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 5/2009, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).

    More about this item

    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:crf:wpaper:10-06. 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: Martine Zenner The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Martine Zenner to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsculu.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.