Our aim is to analyze the link between optimism and risk aversion in a subjective expected utility setting and to estimate the average level of optimism when weighted by risk tolerance. Its estimation leads to a non-trivial statistical problem. We start from a large lottery survey (1536...

Agents impatience rate and their anticipations about the future of the economy, are two essential determinants of the equilibrium discount rate, as illustrated by the Ramsey formula. Heterogeneity in time preference rates and in anticipations is widely acknowledged. Our objective is to determine...

type="main" xml:id="rssb12056-abs-0001" <title type="main">Summary</title> <p>The choice of the summary statistics that are used in Bayesian inference and in particular in approximate Bayesian computation algorithms has bearings on the validation of the resulting inference. Those statistics are nonetheless customarily used...</p>

Sequential techniques can enhance the efficiency of the approximate Bayesian computation algorithm, as in Sisson et al.'s (2007) partial rejection control version. While this method is based upon the theoretical works of Del Moral et al. (2006), the application to approximate Bayesian...

It is an important issue for economic and finance applications to determine whether individuals exhibit a behavioral bias toward pessimism in their beliefs, in a lottery or more generally in an investment opportunities framework. In this paper, we analyze the answers of a sample of 1,540...

In this paper we study the stability (in the L <Superscript> p </Superscript> as well as for the almost sure convergence sense) of the optimal investment-consumption strategy with respect to the choice of the utility function. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg 2004

We address the problem of a social planner who, as in Weitzman, (2001), gathers data on experts' discount rates and wants to infer the social consumption discount rate. We propose an equilibrium approach and we analyze the expression and the properties of the resulting equilibrium discount rate....

We study comparative statics of Nth-degree risk increases within a large class of problems that involve bidimensional payoffs and additive or multiplicative risks. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for unambiguous impact of Nth-degree risk increases on optimal decision making. We...