Ausi Expected Utility : An Anticipated Utility Theory of Relative Disappointment Aversion

In recent years there has been a growing theoretical, experimental and empirical challenge to Expected Utility Theory, the overwhelmingly dominant paradigm for modeling decision-making under risk. However, there has been relatively little work done in providing easily parameterized alternatives for applied work. In this paper we provide an axiomatization for a representation of preferences over lotteries that is only one parameter richer than expected utility. Our model is a special case of Quiggin's Rank Dependent Expected Utility. Moreover, we show that the same restriction on this parameter is required for: risk aversion; intuitive comparative static results for a reasonably general class of economically interesting choice problems; and accommodating some of the most well-known violations of Expected Utility Theory.