The commonly used hyperbolic and quasi-hyperbolic discount functions have been developed to accommodate decreasing impatience, which is the prevailing empirical finding in intertemporal choice, in particular for aggregate behavior. However, these discount functions do not have the flexibility to...

This paper introduces a new preference condition that can be used to justify (or criticize) expected utility. The approach taken in this paper is an alternative to Savage's, and is accessible to readers without a mathematical background. It is based on a method for deriving "comparisons of...

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The utility of gambling, which entails an intrinsic utility or disutility of risk, has been alluded to in the economics literature for over a century. This paper demonstrates that any utility of gambling almost unavoidably implies a violation of fundamental rationality properties, such as...