Most real decisions, unlike those of economics texts, have a status quo alternative--that is, doing nothing or maintaining one's current or previous decision. A series of decision-making experiments shows that individuals disproportionately stick with the status quo. Data on the selections of...

This paper reports the results of three experiments designed to test the predictions of the principal game-theoretic models of bargaining concerning the influence of risk aversion on bargaining outcomes. These models predict that risk aversion will be disadvantageous in bargaining except in...

This article reports the results of an evaluation of the effectiveness of different types of information materials in communicating the risk from exposure to radon, a naturally occurring indoor air pollutant. The study involved a panel of 2300 homeowners who actually experienced risks from...

If I am "coherent," in the sense that I can always replace any subset of outcomes by their certainty equivalent (occuring with the sum of their probabilities), then I must act according to the dogma of maximizing an Exp {U}, ruling out Machina (1982), Allais (1952), and Ysidro (1950)...

A compound of many independent replicas of a gamble may be chosen by a risk averter even if the single gamble would be rejected given any initial wealth level. Samuelson has shown that such choices are impossible if the expected utility theory of preference is adopted. but they are consistent...

This paper discusses two problems. (1) What happens to the conditional risk premium that a decisionmarker is willing to pay out of the middle prize in a lottery to avoid uncertainty concerning the middle prize outcome, when the probabilities of other prizes change? (2) What happens to the...

Valuation formulas for age-specific mortality risks are derived from life-cycle allocation theory under uncertainty and related to empirical estimates of the value of life. A change in an age-specific mortality risk affects all subsequent survivor functions and reallocates consumption and labor...

This article estimates the marginal value of safety based on contingent values obtained in a labor-market-oriented national random-sample mail survey. Thus, worker preferences for safety are assessed directly, in contrast to the hedonic price method that has been used almost exclusively in...