Financial well-being is distinct from income. Some people with high incomes suffer low financial well-being, as their incomes fall short of their aspirations. Such people feel propelled to reach their aspirations by taking risk and willing to bear losses. Conversely, some people with low incomes...

When an agent chooses between prospects, noise in information processing generates an effect akin to the winner’s curse. Statistically unbiased perception systematically overvalues the chosen action because it fails to account for the possibility that noise is responsible for making the...

There is widespread evidence that monetary policy exerts asymmetric effects on output over contractions and expansions in economic activity, while price responses display no sizeable asymmetry. To rationalize these facts we develop a dynamic general equilibrium model where households’ utility...

Data from downtown Boston in the 1990s show that loss aversion determines seller behaviour in the housing market. Condominium owners subject to nominal losses: (1) set higher asking prices of 25-35% of the difference between the property’s expected selling price and their original purchase...

We examine a simple measure of portfolio performance based on prospect theory, which captures not only risk and return but also reflects differential aversion to upside and downside risk. The measure we propose is a ratio of gains to losses, with the gains and losses weighted (if desired) to...

This Paper reports the results of an experimental parameter-free elicitation and decomposition of decision weights under uncertainty. Assuming cumulative prospect theory, utility functions were elicited for gains and losses at an individual level using the trade-off method. Then decision weights...