In most models of (cumulative) prospect theory, reference dependence of preferences is imposed beforehand and the location of the reference point is determined exogenously. This paper presents principles that provide critical tests and foundations for prospect theory preferences without assuming...

A behavioral definition of loss aversion is proposed and its implications for original and cumulative prospect theory are analyzed. Original prospect theory is in agreement with the new loss aversion condition, and there utility is capturing all effects of loss aversion. In cumulative prospect...

A behavioral condition of loss aversion is proposed and tested. Forty-nine students participated in experiments on binary choices among lotteries involving small scale real gains and losses. At the aggregate level, a significant proportion of the choices are in the direction predicted by loss...

This paper reports a violation of rank-dependent utility with inverse S-shaped probability weighting for binary gambles. The paper starts with a violation of expected utility theory: one-stage gambles elicit systematically different utilities than theoretically equivalent two-stage gambles. This...

This paper shows that QALYs can be derived from more elementary conditions than thought hitherto in the literature: it suffices to impose risk neutrality for life years in every health state. This derivation of QALYs is appealing because it does not require knowledge of concepts from utility...

Allowing for sign-dependence in discounting substantially improves the description of people’s time preferences. The deviations from constant discounting that we observed were more pronounced for losses than for gains. Our data also suggest that the discount function should be flexible enough...

This paper provides a characterization of QALYs, the most important outcome measure in medical decision making, in the context of a general rank dependent utility model. We show that both for chronic and for nonchronic health states the characterization of QALYs depends on intuitive conditions....

In a seminal contribution, Thaler and Johnson ( 35 ) detected the existence of a house money effect which is defined as an increase in risk tolerance after previous gains resulting from a risky activity. Subsequent studies used the term house money effect also in case of windfall gains, i.e.,...