Motivated by the extensive evidence about the relevance of status quo bias both in experiments and in real markets, we study this phenomenon from a decision-theoretic prospective, focusing on the case of preferences under uncertainty. We develop an axiomatic framework that takes as a primitive...

We use four incentivized representative surveys to study the endowment effect for lotteries in 4,000 U.S. adults. We replicate the standard finding of an endowment effect–the divergence between Willingness to Accept (WTA) and Willingness to Pay (WTP), but document three new findings. First, we...

Two of the most well known regularities observed in preferences under risk and uncertainty are ambiguity aversion and the Allais paradox. We study the behavior of an agent who can display both tendencies simultaneously. We introduce a novel notion of preference for hedging that applies to both...

Willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA) a monetary amount for a lottery should be closely related. In data from an incentivized survey of a representative sample of 3,000 U.S. adults, we find that WTA and WTP for a lottery are, at best, weakly correlated. Across all respondents,...

One of the most well-known models of non-expected utility is Gul (1991)'s model of Disappointment Aversion. This model, however, is defined implicitly, as the solution to a functional equation; its explicit utility representation is unknown, which may limit its applicability. We show that an...

Ellsberg's experiment involved a gamble with no ambiguity (N) and a gamble where the prize that could be won is objectively known, but the winning probability depends on the (ambiguous) urn's composition (P). We extend this by including a gamble where the winning probability is objectively...

We study preferences over lotteries in which both the prize and the payment date are uncertain. In particular, atime lotteryis one in which the prize is fixed but the date is random. With Expected Discounted Utility, individuals must be riskseekingover time lotteries (RSTL). In an incentivized...