IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/64672.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Prelec’s function discontinuous at p = 1? (for the Einhorn Award of SJDM)

Author

Listed:
  • Harin, Alexander

Abstract

A possibility of the existence of a discontinuity of Prelec’s (probability weighting) function at the probability p = 1 is discussed. This possibility is supported by the purely mathematical theorems and the “certain–uncertain” inconsistency of the random–lottery incentive experiments. The results of the well-known experiment support it as well.

Suggested Citation

  • Harin, Alexander, 2015. "Is Prelec’s function discontinuous at p = 1? (for the Einhorn Award of SJDM)," MPRA Paper 64672, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:64672
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/64672/1/MPRA_paper_64672.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christian A. Vossler & Maurice Doyon & Daniel Rondeau, 2012. "Truth in Consequentiality: Theory and Field Evidence on Discrete Choice Experiments," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 145-171, November.
    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. Pedro Bordalo & Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2012. "Salience Theory of Choice Under Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(3), pages 1243-1285.
    4. Daniel Kahneman & Jack L. Knetsch & Richard H. Thaler, 1991. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-206, Winter.
    5. Harin, Alexander, 2009. "Ruptures in the probability scale? Calculation of ruptures’ dimensions," MPRA Paper 19348, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Harin, Alexander, 2015. "An existence theorem for restrictions on the mean in the presence of a restriction on the dispersion," MPRA Paper 64646, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Diecidue, Enrico & Schmidt, Ulrich & Zank, Horst, 2009. "Parametric weighting functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 1102-1118, May.
    8. Guido Baltussen & G. Post & Martijn Assem & Peter Wakker, 2012. "Random incentive systems in a dynamic choice experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(3), pages 418-443, September.
    9. David J. Butler & Graham C. Loomes, 2007. "Imprecision as an Account of the Preference Reversal Phenomenon," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 277-297, March.
    10. Alexander Harin, 2012. "Data Dispersion in Economics (I) - Possibility of Restrictions," Review of Economics & Finance, Better Advances Press, Canada, vol. 2, pages 59-70, August.
    11. Masson, Robert T, 1974. "Utility Functions with Jump Discontinuities: Some Evidence and Implications from Peasant Agriculture," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 12(4), pages 559-566, December.
    12. Yoram Halevy, 2008. "Strotz Meets Allais: Diminishing Impatience and the Certainty Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 1145-1162, June.
    13. Loewenstein, George & Thaler, Richard H, 1989. "Intertemporal Choice," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 181-193, Fall.
    14. Chris Starmer, 2000. "Developments in Non-expected Utility Theory: The Hunt for a Descriptive Theory of Choice under Risk," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(2), pages 332-382, June.
    15. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Aurelien Baillon & Laetitia Placido & Peter P. Wakker, 2011. "The Rich Domain of Uncertainty: Source Functions and Their Experimental Implementation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 695-723, April.
    16. Beattie, Jane & Loomes, Graham, 1997. "The Impact of Incentives upon Risky Choice Experiments," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 155-168, March.
    17. Robin Cubitt & Chris Starmer & Robert Sugden, 1998. "On the Validity of the Random Lottery Incentive System," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(2), pages 115-131, September.
    18. Drazen Prelec, 1998. "The Probability Weighting Function," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(3), pages 497-528, May.
    19. Tversky, Amos & Wakker, Peter, 1995. "Risk Attitudes and Decision Weights," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(6), pages 1255-1280, November.
    20. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier l’Haridon & Horst Zank, 2009. "Separating Curvature and Elevation: A Parametric Weighting Function," Economics Discussion Paper Series 0901, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    21. 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..
    22. Glenn W. Harrison & Eric Johnson & Melayne M. McInnes & E. Elisabet Rutström, 2005. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 897-901, June.
    23. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    24. Ian Larkin & Stephen Leider, 2012. "Incentive Schemes, Sorting, and Behavioral Biases of Employees: Experimental Evidence," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 184-214, May.
    25. Daniel Kahneman & Richard H. Thaler, 2006. "Anomalies: Utility Maximization and Experienced Utility," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(1), pages 221-234, Winter.
    26. Schoemaker, Paul J. H. & Hershey, John C., 1992. "Utility measurement: Signal, noise, and bias," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 397-424, August.
    27. Starmer, Chris & Sugden, Robert, 1991. "Does the Random-Lottery Incentive System Elicit True Preferences? An Experimental Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 971-978, September.
    28. Schoemaker, Paul J H, 1982. "The Expected Utility Model: Its Variants, Purposes, Evidence and Limitations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 529-563, June.
    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. Harin, Alexander, 2015. "Problems of utility and prospect theories. A “certain–uncertain” inconsistency within their experimental methods," MPRA Paper 67911, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Harin, Alexander, 2014. "Problems of utility and prospect theories. A ”certain-uncertain” inconsistency of the random-lottery incentive system," MPRA Paper 55706, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Harin, Alexander, 2023. "To solve old problems of economics. The experimental background," MPRA Paper 117157, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Harin, Alexander, 2014. "Problems of utility and prospect theories. A discontinuity of Prelec’s function," MPRA Paper 61027, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Harin, Alexander, 2014. "Problems of utility and prospect theories. Certainty effect near certainty," MPRA Paper 61026, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Alexander Harin, 2024. "About a “Certain-uncertain†Inconsistency within the Generally Accepted Experimental Procedures of Behavioral Economics," International Journal of Economics and Financial Research, Academic Research Publishing Group, vol. 10(2), pages 17-30, 06-2024.
    7. Harin, Alexander, 2024. "“Certain-uncertain” inconsistency within the basic experimental procedures of behavioral economics," MPRA Paper 121756, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Enrico Diecidue & Ayse Öncüler, 2011. "Risk Preferences at Different Time Periods: An Experimental Investigation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(5), pages 975-987, May.
    9. Katarzyna M. Werner & Horst Zank, 2019. "A revealed reference point for prospect theory," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 731-773, June.
    10. Peter Brooks & Simon Peters & Horst Zank, 2014. "Risk behavior for gain, loss, and mixed prospects," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(2), pages 153-182, August.
    11. Harin, Alexander, 2016. "An inconsistency between certain outcomes and uncertain incentives within behavioral methods," MPRA Paper 75311, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Víctor González-Jiménez, 2021. "Incentive contracts when agents distort probabilities," Vienna Economics Papers vie2101, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    13. Harin, Alexander, 2018. "Forbidden zones and biases for the expectation of a random variable. Version 2," MPRA Paper 85607, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. James Cox & Vjollca Sadiraj & Ulrich Schmidt, 2015. "Paradoxes and mechanisms for choice under risk," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(2), pages 215-250, June.
    15. Jinrui Pan & Craig S. Webb & Horst Zank, 2019. "Delayed probabilistic risk attitude: a parametric approach," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(2), pages 201-232, September.
    16. Harin, Alexander, 2018. "Forbidden zones for the expectation. New mathematical results for behavioral and social sciences," MPRA Paper 86650, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Víctor González-Jiménez, 2021. "Incentive contracts when agents distort probabilities," Vienna Economics Papers 2101, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    18. Thomas Epper & Helga Fehr-Duda, 2012. "The missing link: unifying risk taking and time discounting," ECON - Working Papers 096, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Oct 2018.
    19. Kim Kaivanto & Eike Kroll, 2014. "Alternation bias and reduction in St. Petersburg gambles," Working Papers 65600286, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    20. Nathalie Etchart-Vincent & Olivier l’Haridon, 2011. "Monetary incentives in the loss domain and behavior toward risk: An experimental comparison of three reward schemes including real losses," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 61-83, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Prelec; utility; prospect theory; probability weighting function; Luce;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C0 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General
    • C02 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - Mathematical Economics
    • C1 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General
    • C8 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs
    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • G02 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Behavioral Finance: Underlying Principles
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    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:pra:mprapa:64672. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.