IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ore/uoecwp/2002-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Prospect Theory in Choice and Pricing Tasks

Author

Listed:
  • William T. Harbaugh

    (University of Oregon Economics Department)

  • Kate Krause

    (University of New Mexico Economics Department)

  • Lise Vesterlund

    (University of Pittsburgh Economics Department)

Abstract

The most distinctive prediction of prospect theory is the fourfold pattern (FFP) of risk attitudes. People are said to be (1) risk-seeking over low-probability gains, (2) risk-averse over low-probability losses, (3) risk-averse over high-probability gains, and (4) risk-seeking over high-probability losses. Using simple gambles over real payoffs, we conduct a direct test of this FFP prediction. We find that when pricing gambles subjects’ risk attitudes are consistent with the FFP. However, when they choose between the gamble and its expected value, their decisions are not distinguishable from random choice and are often the exact opposite of the prediction. These results hold both between and within subjects, and are robust even when we allow the subjects to simultaneously review and change their price and choice decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • William T. Harbaugh & Kate Krause & Lise Vesterlund, 2002. "Prospect Theory in Choice and Pricing Tasks," University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers 2002-02, University of Oregon Economics Department, revised 20 Aug 2007.
    • Handle: RePEc:ore:uoecwp:2002-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://economics.uoregon.edu/papers/UO-2002-2_Harbaugh_Risk_Choice_Price.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    probability weighting; expected utility; prospect theory; cumulative prospect theory; preference reversal;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General

    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:ore:uoecwp:2002-02. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Bill Harbaugh (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuorus.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.