A tractable method to measure utility and loss aversion under prospect theory

This paper provides an efficient method to measure utility under prospect theory. Our method minimizes both the number of elicitations required to measure utility and the cognitive burden for subjects, being based on the elicitation of certainty equivalents for two-outcome prospects. We applied our method in an experiment and were able to replicate the main findings on prospect theory, suggesting that our method measures what it is intended to. Our data confirmed empirically that risk seeking and concave utility can coincide under prospect theory. Utility did not depend on the probability used in the elicitation, which offers support for the validity of prospect theory.

Some new classes of multivariate survival distribution functions

The concept of the univariate mean remaining life (m.r.l.) function is generalized to the multivariate case. The multivariate mean remaining life (m.m.r.l.) function is utilized to introduce four new classes of multivariate survival distribution functions (s.d.f.'s). Each of these classes is a new generalization of the univariate decreasing mean remaining life (DMRL) class of s.d.f.'s. The duals of these classes are introduced. Some properties, physical interpretation, and relationships among these classes are investigated. Also for each case, the class of s.d.f.'s common in a class and its dual is characterized.     

Underemployment: Individual and marital adjustment to income loss

Psychological and interpersonal adjustments to income loss were investigated by comparing 25 couples in which husbands were underemployed to 88 couples in which husbands had been continuously employed. Husbands were considered underemployed if they had lost 20% of their annual earnings. Via questionnaires, husbands and wives reported on attitudes and on attributions for their present financial circumstances. Underemployed husbands and their wives were less satisfied with their finances and their marriages than the comparison group. The components of depression and marital dissatisfaction, for under-employed and continuously employed couples, and the importance of gathering data from both spouses, are discussed.Research reported in this paper was supported by funds from the Agricultural Experiment Station, Regional Project W-167—Coping with Stress: Adaptation of Nonmetropolitan Families to Socioeconomic Change (Technical Paper #8358). An earlier version was presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council on Family Relations, Dearborn, Michigan, November 5, 1986.The assistance of Tom Guss and Linda Ladd in gathering these data is gratefully acknowledged. The author also wishes to thank Petra Zengerle for statistical analysis; Alan Sugawara, Alexis Walker, Dorothy Price, Mari Wilhelm, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.Anisa M. Zvonkovic received her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. Research interests include close relationships and the effect of socio-economic changes on interpersonal bonds. Address correspondence to Dr. Zvonkovic, Assistant Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.     

Uniform asymptotic linearity in a regression parameter of a process based on a rank statistic

For X₁, …, X_N a random sample from a distribution F, let the process S^δ_N(t) be defined as where K²_N = σ^N_i=1(c_i ? c?)² and R x_i, + Δd, is the rank of X_i + Δd_i, among X₁ + Δd₁, …, X_N + Δd_N. The purpose of this note is to prove that, under certain regularity conditions on F and on the constants c_i and d_i, S^Δ_N (t) is asymptotically approximately a linear function of Δ, uniformly in t and in Δ, |Δ| ≤ C. The special case of two samples is considered.     

Changing the default setting for information privacy protection: What and whose personal information can be better protected?

With Internet service providers (ISPs) increasingly demanding personal information to develop personalized services, people have become more vulnerable to privacy infringement. As a way to protect individuals’ privacy, industrialized countries have implemented a “notice-and-consent” requirement, meaning an ISP must obtain users’ consent to collect personal information in the course of the ISP's business. Drawing on prospect theory and earlier work on information privacy and behavioral science, in this study, we administered an online survey experiment to test whether the giving of consent differs between ‘opt-in’ and ‘opt-out’ frames. The framing effect was found to be moderated by personal information type, people's attitudes toward privacy, and people's privacy infringement experience. The results indicate that the opt-in frame better protects users’ information privacy, and the framing effect is magnified when the targeted information concerns online activities, when users have weakly held privacy attitudes, and when users have less experience of privacy infringement.     

Places,loss and logging among the Kamula

This paper outlines some of the relationships between Kamula understandings of embodied personhood and place. It seeks to supplement existing accounts of place in the Bosavi region of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Such understandings have largely been based on song, poetry and myth (Feld ; Schieffelin ). By way of contrast, this paper describes comparatively mundane Kamula experiences of place. The Kamula talk I consider emphasizes socially mediated forms of unification of person and place associated with notions of shared ‘appearance’, ‘equivalence’ and ‘enhancement’. Such terms are further explained by reference to Kamula understandings of the effects of losing a relationship with place. I conclude by showing how such understandings of loss are being deployed in Kamula demands for compensation from the state and logging companies. Through a discussion of these themes the paper contributes to the growing literature on the relationship between personhood, place and development in Papua New Guinea.     

On the inadmssibelity of ridge estimator in a linear model

The necessary and sufficient conditions for the inadmissibility of the ridge regression is discussed under two different criteria, namely, average loss and Pitman nearness. Although the two criteria are very different, same conclusions are obtained. The loss functions considered in this article are th likelihood loss function and the Mahalanobis loss function. The two loss functions are motivated from the point of view of classification of two normal populations. Under the Mahalanobis loss it is demonstrated that the ridge regression is always inadmissible as long as the errors are assumed to be symmetrically distributed about the origin.     

A Universal QQ-Plot for Continuous Non-homogeneous Populations

This article presents a universal quantile-quantile (QQ) plot that may be used to assess the fit of a family of absolutely continuous distribution functions in a possibly non-homogeneous population. This plot is more general than probability plotting papers because it may be used for distributions having more than two parameters. It is also more general than standard quantile-quantile plots because it may be used for families of not-necessarily identical distributions. In particular, the universal QQ plot may be used in the context of non-homogeneous Poisson processes, generalized linear models, and other general models.     

Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test Statistic and Critical Values for the Erlang-3 and Erlang-4 Distributions

Following a procedure applied to the Erlang-2 distribution in a recent paper, an adjusted Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic and critical values are developed for the Erlang-3 and -4 cases using data from Monte Carlo simulations. The test statistic produced features of compactness and ease of implementation. It is quite accurate for sample sizes as low as ten.     

Applications and Implementations of Continuous Robust Designs

In the literature concerning the construction of robust optimal designs, many resulting designs turn out to have densities. In practice, an exact design should tell the experimenter what the support points are and how many subjects should be allocated to each of these points. In particular, we consider a practical situation in which the number of support points allowed is constrained. We discuss an intuitive approach, which motivates a new implementation scheme that minimizes the loss function based on the Kolmogorov and Smirnov distance between an exact design and the optimal design having a density. We present three examples to illustrate the application and implementation of a robust design constructed: one for a nonlinear dose-response experiment and the other two for general linear regression. Additionally, we perform some simulation studies to compare the efficiencies of the exact designs obtained by our optimal implementation with those by other commonly used implementation methods.