Some people find decision making under uncertainty difficult because they fear making the "wrong decision," wrong in the sense that the outcome of their chosen alternative proves to be worse than could have been achieved with another alternative. These people may be willing to pay a premium to...

Expected utility theory is widely acknowledged to be a rational approach to making decisions involving risk. Yet the methodology gives no explicit role to measures of risk and return. In this paper we identify those families of utility functions that are compatible with a risk-return...

Consider the relative attractiveness to a decision maker of two financial gambles as the wealth of that individual varies. It may seem reasonable that either one alternative should be preferred for all wealth levels or that there exists a unique critical wealth level at which the decision maker...