Transitivity in Health Utility Measurement: An Experimental Analysis

Several experimental studies observed substantial violations of transitivity in decisions between risky lotteries over monetary outcomes. The goal of our experiment is to test whether these violations also affect the evaluation of health states. A particular feature of our experimental design is that it takes into account the possible role of decision errors in generating violations of transitivity. Since we find neither substantial nor systematic deviations from transitive choice behaviour, we can conclude that previously reported violations do not seem to bias health utility measurement