Risk-neutral individuals take more risky decisions when they have limited liability. Risk-neutral managers may not when acting as agents under contract and taking costly actions to acquire information before taking decisions. Limited liability makes it optimal to increase the reward for outcomes...

A key open question for theories of reference-dependent preferences is what determines the reference point. One candidate is expectations: what people expect could affect how they feel about what actually occurs. In a real-effort experiment, we manipulate the rational expectations of subjects...

The paper develops an axiomatic framework for rational decision making. The von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms give rise to a richer risk attitude than that captured in the standard discounted expected utility model. I derive three models that permit a more comprehensive risk evaluation. These...

We present results from a field experiment designed to measure the importance of managerial commitment to a contract within a firm that pays its workers piece rates. In the tree planting industry the piece rate paid to workers is determined as a function of the difficulty of the terrain to be...

We examine the combined effects of asymmetric taxation and limited liability on optimal risk taking of investors. Given an optimal risk level in the pre-tax case under full liability, loss-offset restrictions reduce, and limited liability enhances the incentives for taking risk. For every degree...

Decisions under risk are often multidimensional, where the preferences of the decision maker depend on several attributes. For example, an individual might be concerned about both her level of wealth and the condition of her health. Many times the signs of successive cross derivatives of a...

In this paper we propose minority voting as a scheme that can partially protect individuals from the risk of repeated exploitation. We consider a committee that meets twice to decide about projects where the first-period project may have a long-lasting impact. In the first period a simple open...

We use a Wicksellian single rotation framework to analyze the impact of the intertemporally fluctuating and stochastic mean-reverting interest rate process on the optimal harvesting threshold and thereby the expected length of the rotation period, when forest value is also stochastic following...

In this paper we analyze a large sample of individual responses to six lottery questions. We derive a simultaneous estimate of risk aversion and the time preference discount rate per individual. This can be done because the consumption of a large prize is smoothed over a larger time period. It...

The paper uses both the single rotation and ongoing rotation framework to study the impact of yield tax, lump-sum tax, cash flow tax and tax on interest rate earnings on the privately optimal rotation period when forest value growth is stochastic and forest owners are either risk neutral or risk...