We characterize the literacy of an individual in a domain by their elicited subjective belief distribution over the possible responses to a question posed in that domain. We consider literacy across several financial, economic and statistical domains. We find considerable demographic...

It has been reported that betrayal aversion in influences the trust decision (Bohnet and Zeckhauser 2004; Bohnet et al. 2008). This paper adds to the literature by examining how concern for others' disutility from betrayal can affect the decision to repay trust. We compare trustees' behavior when...

Prominent theories of decision under risk that challenge expected utility theory model risk attitudes at least partly with transformation of probabilities. This paper shows how attributing local risk aversion (partly or wholly) to attitudes towards probabilities can produce extreme probability...

We propose a statistical model to assess whether individuals strategically use mixed strategies in repeated games. We formulate a hidden Markov model in which the latent state space contains both pure and mixed strategies, and allows switching between these states. We apply the model to data...

A common methodology in experimental research is the use of random incentive mechanisms. This note investigates possible distortion induced by such mechanisms in the context of choice under risk. In the baseline (one task) treatment of our experiment we observe risk behavior in a given choice...

The reduction of compound lotteries (ROCL) has assumed a central role in the evaluation of behavior towards risk and uncertainty. We present experimental evidence on its validity in the domain of objective probabilities. Our experiment explicitly recognizes the impact that the random lottery...

The theoretical literature has a rich characterization of scoring rules for eliciting the subjective beliefs that an individual has for continuous events, but under the restrictive assumption of risk neutrality. It is well known that risk aversion can dramatically affect the incentives to...

Measures of risk attitudes derived from experiments are often questioned because they are based on small stakes bets and do not account for the extent to which the decision-maker integrates the prizes of the experimental tasks with personal wealth. We exploit the existence of detailed...

We evaluate the binary lottery procedure for inducing risk neutral behavior in a subjective belief elicitation task. Harrison, Martinez-Correa and Swarthout [2013] found that the binary lottery procedure works robustly to induce risk neutrality when subjects are given one risk task defined over...

Both the law and culture make a central distinction between acts of commission that overturn the status quo and acts of omission that uphold it. In everyday life acts of commission often elicit stronger reciprocal responses than do acts of omission. In this paper we compare reciprocal responses...