Utility and risk are two often competing measurements on the investment success. We show that efficient trade-off between these two measurements for investment portfolios happens, in general, on a convex curve in the two-dimensional space of utility and risk. This is a rather general pattern....

This paper addresses whether and to what extent econometric methods used in experimental studies can be adapted and applied to financial data to detect the best-fitting preference model. To address the research ques- tion, we implement a frequently used nonlinear probit model in the style of Hey...

We develop an extension of the familiar linear mixed logit model to allow for the direct estimation of parametric non-linear functions defined over structural parameters. A classic application is the estimation of coefficients of utility functions to characterize risk attitudes. There are...

High speed railway (HSR) planners aim to select locations that optimize the overall utility or benefit of HSR stations by satisfying various desirable requirements. Among other factors, accessibility and environmental impact are important considerations for HSR station location selection. The...

We are interested in defining the optimal retirement age by socio-economic class, given a Defined Benefit and a Notional Defined Contribution scheme. We firstly implement a utilitarian framework. Depending on the risk aversion coefficients and individual time preference factors, the results...

Unemployment insurance replacement rates world-wide are well below 100 percent, a fact often attributed to search moral hazard concerns. As Blanchard and Tirole (2008) have illustrated, however, neither search nor layoff moral hazard (firing cost) distortions need arise in first-best insurance...

This paper examines the foundations for comparing individuals and treatment subjects in experimental and other program evaluation contexts. We raise the question of multiattribute "characterization" of individuals both theoretically and statistically. The paper examines the information basis of...

We provide an economic interpretation of the practice consisting in incorporating risk measures as constraints in a classic expected return maximization problem. For what we call the infimum of expectations class of risk measures, we show that if the decision maker (DM) maximizes the expectation...