Social comparison and risky choices

Theories (and experiments) on decision making under risk typically ignore (and exclude) a social context. We explore whether this omission is detrimental. To do so we experimentally investigate the simplest possible situation with both social comparison and risk: participants choose between two lotteries while a referent faces a fixed payoff. Participants are more risk averse when they can earn at most as much as their referent (loss situation) than when they are ensured they will earn at least as much as their referent (gain situation). Prospect theory with a social reference point would predict the exact opposite behavior. These results show that straightforward extensions of existing theories to allow for social comparison do not provide accurate predictions.     

Rational choices: an ecological approach

Theory and Decision - We address the oft-repeated criticism that the demands which the rational choice approach makes on the knowledge and cognition of a decision-maker (DM) are way beyond the...     

On the difficulty of making social choices

The difficulty of making social choices seems to take on two forms: one that is related to both preferences and the method used in aggregating them and one which is related to the preferences only. In the former type the difficulty has to do with the discrepancies of outcomes resulting from various preference aggregation methods and the computation of winners in elections. Some approaches and results which take their motivation from the computability theory are discussed. The latter institution-free type of difficulty pertains to solution theory of the voting games. We discuss the relationships between various solution concepts, e.g. uncovered set, Banks set, Copeland winners. Finally rough sets are utilized in an effort to measure the difficulty of making social choices.     

Competence effects for choices involving gains and losses

We investigate how choices for uncertain gain and loss prospects are affected by the decision maker’s perceived level of knowledge about the underlying domain of uncertainty. Specifically, we test whether Heath and Tversky’s (J Risk Uncertain 4:5–28, 1991) competence hypothesis extends from gains to losses. We predict that the commonly-observed preference for high knowledge over low knowledge prospects for gains reverses for losses. We employ an empirical setup in which participants make hypothetical choices between gain or loss prospects in which the outcome depends on whether a high or low knowledge event occurs. We infer decision weighting functions for high and low knowledge events from choices using a representative agent preference model. For gains, we replicate the results of Kilka and Weber (Manage Sci 47:1712–1726, 2001), finding that decision makers are more attracted to choices that they feel more knowledgeable about. However, for losses, we find limited support for our extension of the competence effect.     

Lone mothers' time allocations: choices and satisfactions

This paper uses the 2006 Australian Time Use Survey to examine the allocation of time to personal care, employment‐related activities, home duties, leisure and child care of lone mothers, in comparison to the time allocations of single women, women in childless couples and partnered mothers. Both primary and secondary time allocations are considered. The satisfactions that women report concerning their current time allocations are also analysed. The time use and satisfaction data are described using both tabulations and multiple regression methods. Lone mothers are shown to have similar time allocations as the other types of households, even though they have different financial and time resources. This raises the concern that lone mothers' desire or need to maintain such time allocations may lead to task overload. Consistent with this, lone mothers are found to be less satisfied with the way they allocate their time than single women and partnered mothers. The tensions associated with time use among lone mothers discussed in the literature are real, and important.     

Common genetic effects on risk-taking preferences and choices

Although prior research has shown that risk-taking preferences and choices are correlated across many domains, there is a dearth of research investigating whether these correlations are primarily the result of genetic or environmental factors. We examine the extent to which common genetic factors account for the association between general risk-taking preferences and domain-specific risk-taking preferences, and between general risk-taking preferences and risk taking choices in financial investments, stock market participation and business formation. Using data from 1898 monozygotic (MZ) and 1344 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins, we find that general risk-taking shares a common genetic component with domain-specific risk-taking preferences and risk-taking choices.

     

Individual-level loss aversion in riskless and risky choices

Theory and Decision - Loss aversion can occur in riskless and risky choices. We present novel evidence on both in a non-student sample (660 randomly selected customers of a car manufacturer). We...     

Information,risk perceptions,and smoking choices of youth

Conventional wisdom maintains that youths take risks because they underestimate probabilities of harm. Presumably if they knew the true probabilities, they would behave differently. We used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to assess whether differences between subjective and objective probabilities that an adverse outcome to self will occur are systematically related to a harmful behavior, initiating smoking. We find that youths are generally pessimistic about probabilities of their own deaths and being violent crime victims. After smoking initiation, youths increase subjective probabilities of death by more than the objective increase in mortality risk, implying recognition of potential harms. Virtually all 12–14 year-olds know that smoking causes heart disease. The minority who believe that smoking causes AIDS are less likely to become smokers; i.e., risk misperceptions deter rather than cause smoking initiation. Messages designed to deter smoking initiation should stress other disadvantages of smoking than just probabilities of harm.     

Reforming pensions: Myths, truths, and policy choices

This paper discusses the building blocks of pension reform in the light of economic theory, and their application to different types of economy. The opening section sets out the simple economics of pensions. The second section discusses a series of myths which have proved remarkably persistent. Building on this analysis, the latter part of the paper sets out the foundations of effective pensions policy. The third section discusses the prerequisites which any pension reform must respect, i.e. those things which policy advisers can — and should — assert authoritatively. The fourth section turns to the range of choices facing policymakers, drawing on the very different arrangements in different countries. The main conclusions are threefold: (1) The key variable is effective government. (2) From an economic perspective, the difference between pay-as-you-go and funding is second order. (3) The range of potential choice over pension design is wide. One size does not fit all.     

New era writers： aesthetic choices and the generation gap

从20世纪90年代开始，“代际差别”越来越突出地体现在新时期50、60和70年代出生的三个重要作家群中。他们不仅在叙事内容上表现为宏大叙事和使命意识的不断弱化、个人化意愿的不断增强；还在叙事形式上体现为或崇尚写实风格，或追求现代手法，或迷恋于碎片化细节等不同的审美特质，同时也折射了各自不同的审美观念。从文化人类学的角度看，这种代际差别实际隐含了不同历史文化语境和成长记忆对人类精神的潜在规约。代际差别虽然是多元文学格局的一种表现，但是，如何加强代际间的精神交流，有效克服代际内部各自的局限性，同样是促进中国当代文学健康发展的一个不可忽略的重要方面。     

New era writers: aesthetic choices and the generation gap

从20世纪90年代开始,“代际差别”越来越突出地体现在新时期50、60和70年代 出生的三个重要作家群中。他们不仅在叙事内容上表现为宏大叙事和使命意识的不断 弱化、个人化意愿的不断增强;还在叙事形式上体现为或崇尚写实风格,或追求现代 手法,或迷恋于碎片化细节等不同的审美特质,同时也折射了各自不同的审美观念。 从文化人类学的角度看,这种代际差别实际隐含了不同历史文化语境和成长记忆对人 类精神的潜在规约。代际差别虽然是多元文学格局的一种表现,但是,如何加强代际 间的精神交流,有效克服代际内部各自的局限性,同样是促进中国当代文学健康发展 的一个不可忽略的重要方面。

关键词: 代际差别?宏大叙事?个人化?文化记忆?代际交流

Since the 1990s, the generation gap among three important groups of writers born in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s has become ever more evident. Not only do they show a tendency toward the weakening of grand narrative and sense of responsibility and the strengthening of individual aspirations, they also show different aesthetic traits in terms of narrative form. Some advocate a realist style, while others pursue modernist techniques or are enamored of fragmentary details. At the same time, each generation projects its own aesthetic ideas. From the viewpoint of cultural anthropology, this kind of generation gap essentially implies the effect of the latent protocols of different historical‐cultural contexts and memories of growing up on the human spirit. Although the generation gap is an expression of a plural cultural scene, the question of how to strengthen intellectual interaction between different generations of writers and effectively overcome the limitations of each generation remains an important aspect of the promotion of the healthy development of modern Chinese literature.     

Fighting the COVID pandemic: National policy choices in non-pharmaceutical interventions

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed countries to adopt various non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Due to the features of the pandemic, which spread over time and space, governments could decide whether or not to follow policy choices made by leaders of countries affected by the virus before them. In this study, we aim to empirically model the adoption of NPIs during the first wave of COVID-19 in the 14 European countries with more than 10 million inhabitants, in order to detect whether a policy diffusion mechanism occurred. By means of a multivariate approach based on Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis, we manage to derive three clusters representing different behaviour models to which the different European countries belong in the different periods of the first wave: pre-pandemic, summer relaxation and deep-lockdown scenarios. These results bring a two-fold contribution: on the one hand, they may help us to understand differences and similarities among European countries during the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak and guide future quantitative or qualitative studies; on the other, our findings suggest that with minor exceptions (such as Sweden and Poland), different countries adopted very similar policy strategies, which are likely to be due more to the unfolding of the pandemic than to specific governmental strategies.     

Reevaluating evidence on myopic loss aversion: aggregate patterns versus individual choices

Investors who are more willing to accept risks when evaluating their investments less frequently are said to exhibit myopic loss aversion (MLA). Several recent experimental studies found that, on average, subjects bet significantly higher amounts on a risky lottery when they observe only a cumulative outcome of several realizations of the lottery (long evaluation period). In this article, we reexamine these empirical findings by analyzing individual rather than aggregate choice patterns. The behavior of the majority of subjects is inconsistent with the hypothesis of MLA: they bet an intermediate fraction of their initial endowment and these bets, on average, are not significantly different across two treatments with short and long evaluation period. We discuss several alternative explanations of this finding, including the Fechner model of random errors and the financial asset pricing model.     

Techniques for measuring the welfare effects of protection: Appraising the choices

In the last few years there have been a bewildering variety of proposals on how the static welfare costs of protection are best conceptualized and measured. A survey and appraisal appears called for to show how the concepts differ and under what conditions they turn out to be special cases of each other. Furthermore, if actual measures are required, what is the loss of accuracy that arises from using methods which, while conceptually inferior to others in most cases, require fewer, and less uncertain, informational inputs?     

Social interaction effects: The impact of distributional preferences on risky choices

This paper identifies convex distributional preferences as a possible cause for the empirical observation that agents belonging to the same group tend to behave similarly in risky environments. We first show theoretically that convex distributional preferences imply social interaction effects in risky choices in the sense that observing a peer choose a risky (safe) option increases the agent’s incentive to choose the risky (safe) option as well, even when lotteries are stochastically independent and the agent can only observe the lottery chosen by the peer but not the corresponding outcome. We then confirm our theoretical predictions experimentally.     

The impact of risk aversion and ambiguity aversion on annuity and saving choices

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty - We analyze the impact of risk aversion and ambiguity aversion on the competing demands for annuities and bequeathable savings using a lifecycle recursive utility...