This paper reports on the results of a Monte Carlo investigation into the power of commonly employed procedures for identifying the 'correct' preference functional of individuals, and hence for discriminating between the large number of preference functionals now advocated in the theoretical...

Previous experimental results show clearly that many subjects do not optimize when solving a life-cycle consumption problem. What do they do? This paper attempts to resolve this question, looking at the discounting, hyperbolic and rolling models as possible explanations. Data from two...

This paper represents an intersection between two lines of research. The first is portfolio choice theory, which underlies much of finance; the second is the elicitation of preferences under uncertainty. The theory of the behaviour of financial markets builds heavily on portfolio choice theory;...

There is widespread concern that favoring suppliers with good past performance, a standard practice in private procurement, may hinder entry by new firms in public procurement markets. In this paper we report results from a laboratory experiment exploring the relationship between reputation and...

This paper reports results from a laboratory experiment exploring the relationship between reputation and entry in procurement. There is widespread concern among regulators that favoring suppliers with good past performance, a standard practice in private procurement, may hinder entry by new...

We report results from a laboratory experiment exploring the extent to which individuals can solve a deterministic, intertemporal lifecycle consumption optimization problem. The environment we study has a positive interest rate on savings and no discounting implying that the optimal consumption...

Experiments on intertemporal consumption typically show that people have difficulties in optimally solving such problems. Previous studies have focused on contexts in which agents are faced with risky future incomes and have to plan over long horizons. We present an experiment comparing decision...

We report results from a laboratory experiment exploring the extent to which individuals can solve a deterministic, intertemporal lifecycle consumption optimization problem and the effect of revealing social information on past average consumption amounts; as all individuals have identical...

This article is connected with recent attempts to estimate EU and Generalised EU preference functionals using (complete ranking) experimental data and maximum likelihood estimation techniques. In particular, we explore, using Monte Carlo techniques, the power of such procedures in correctly...

Two recent papers, Harless and Camerer (1994) and Hey and Orme (1994) are both addressed to the same question: which is the "best" theory of decision making under risk? As an essential part of their separate approaches to an answer to this question, both sets of authors had to make an assumption...