Will a more risk-averse individual spend more or less to improve probabilities, say on marketing efforts that enhance the chance of a sale? For any two payoffs and starting probabilities, the answer is unfortunately indeterminate. However, interpreting gambling as increasing small chances of...

The insurance crisis of the mid-l980s produced a number of legal and public policy reactions. Although many of the immediate symptoms of that crisis have disappeared, a number of its underlying causes remain. This article analyzes the continuing effect of these factors on the insurance markets,...

The widely observed preference for lotteries involving precise rather than vague or ambiguous probabilities is called ambiguity aversion. Ambiguity aversion cannot be predicted or explained by conventional expected utility models. For the subjectivity weighted linear utility (SWLU) model, we...

Recently, a number of generalizations of the expected utility (EU) model have been proposed. In order to make such generalizations useful, it is necessary that they should yield sharp comparative static results, like those obtained using EU theory. In this article, rank dependent expected...

Seat belts, child safety seats, and motorcycle helmets are not used all the time by drivers, parents, or riders when they travel. Since the safety advantages of these types of equipment are well established, nonuse could be due to risk incompetence. This article starts instead with risk...

In this article, we first examine the various criticisms of the probabilistic model. Then we introduce capacities in order to show that if a probability measure corresponds to anesthetizing the belief of the agent's knowledge, it is then possible to suggest another type of rationality--namely,...

In the expected utility case, the risk-aversion measure is given by the Arrow-Pratt index. Three proposals of a risk-aversion measure for the nonexpected utility case are examined. The first one sets "the second derivative of the acceptance frontier as a measure of local risk aversion." The...

Theoretical models for estimating individuals' values for sure improvements in environmental quality are well developed. These models can be classified as being based on averting behavior, hedonic prices, or weak complementarity. Some of these models have also been applied to the task of valuing...

Finite first-order gambles are axiomatized. The representation combines features of prospect and rank-dependent theories. What is novel are distinctions between gains and losses and the inclusion of a binary operation of joint receipt. In addition to many of the usual structural and rationality...