In this paper, we present the results of a simple, easily replicable, survey study based on lottery bonds. It is aimed at testing whether agents make investment decisions according to expected utility, cumulative prospect theory (Tversky-Kahneman, 1992) or optimal expectations theory...

In this article, a simple paper-and-pencil experiment, based on lottery bonds, shows that financial decisions taken by participants are inconsistent with the traditional view of economic agents as risk averse expected utility maximizers. First, our results cast doubt on the relevance of variance...

We present the results of a simple, easily replicable, survey study based on lottery bonds. It is aimed at testing whether agents make investment decisions according to expected utility, cumulative prospect theory or optimal expectations theory, when they face skewed distributions of returns. We...

The disposition effect is a well-established phenomenon in the empirical and experimental financial literature. It leads to sell winners too early and to hold losers too long. In this paper, we show that the consciousness of the disposition effect by investors lead them to require a greater risk...

In a recent article entitled 'Putting Risk in its Proper Place,' Eeckhoudt and Schlesinger (2006) established a theorem linking the sign of the n-th derivative of an agent's utility function to her preferences among pairs of simple lotteries. We characterize these lotteries and show that, in a...