We find that in cumulative prospect theory (CPT) with a concave value function in gains, a lottery with finite expected value may have infinite subjective value. This problem does not occur in expected utility theory. The paradox occurs in particular in the setting and the parameter regime...

We study stock market reactions to large international military conflicts since World War II. Using a news analysis proxy for the estimated likelihood that a conflict will result in a war, we find that an increase in the war likelihood tends to decrease stock prices, but the ultimate outbreak of...

The new regulation of the EU for financial products (UCITS IV) prescribes Value at Risk (VaR) as the benchmark for assessing the risk of structured products. We discuss the limitations of this approach and show that, in theory, the expected return of structured products is unbounded while the...

The paper shows that financial market equilibria need not exist if agents possess cumulative prospect theory preferences with piecewise-power value functions. The reason is an infinite short-selling problem. But even when a short-sell constraint is added, non-existence can occur due to...

We examine time discounting factors in an international survey. Our analysis reveals a significant relationship between time discount factors and historical equity premiums across 27 countries. This result implies that higher historical equity risk premiums are observed in countries where survey...

In this paper, we first show that for classical rational investors with correct beliefs and constant absolute or constant relative risk aversion, the utility gains from structured products over and above a portfolio consisting of the risk-free asset and the market portfolio are typically much...

We demonstrate that in simple 2×2 games (cumulative) prospect theory preferences can be (semi-)evolutionarily stable, in particular, a population of players with prospect theory preferences is stable against more rational players, i.e. players with a smaller degree of probability weighting. We...

We prove a formula for the computation of optimal financial investments in an expected utility framework with arbitrary (not necessarily concave) utility functions. This extends classical results on optimal financial investments for strictly concave utility functions and is of importance...