This dissertation contains three essays on risk aversion. In the first essay, we an-alyze comparative risk aversion in a new way, through a comparative statics problemin which, for a cost, agents can shift from an initial probability distribution towarda preferred distribution. The Ross...

In Chapter 2, we present a model that allows us to study the effect ofincreased competition among charities for donations, and show that it willresult in a lower provision of public goods. When charities get donations,they must pay two fundraising costs: a travel cost and an extra cost,...

Recent experimental evidence suggests that standard expected utility is violated in a wide variety of ways: losses are treated differently from gains, people are generally risk averse over gains and risk loving over losses, fanning and curvature effects exist, problem representation matters, and...

The standard expected utility model is augmented by allowing individuals to receive additional utility in states in which they consider themselves victorious and to lose a utility increment in which they consider themselves defeated. The resulting event-dependent expected utility model is used...

In this paper, we investigate the possibility of a managerial input that experiences increasing compensation along with decreasing intensity. We call this type of input a "Kiffin good" after the head football coach Lane Kiffin. We propose a novel production process that might lead to Kiffin behavior