In finance theory, the standard deviation of asset returns is almost universally recognised as a measure of risk. This universality continues to exist even in the presence of the known limitations of using the standard deviation and also alternative risk measures. One possible reason for this...

Conventional one-period utility functions in economics assume that initial wealth only enters preferences through the definition of final wealth. As a consequence, those utility functions most utilised (i.e. exponential and quadratic) have implausible risk characteristics. The authors...