Paradoxes and mechanisms for choice under risk

James Cox, Vjollca Sadiraj and Ulrich Schmidt

No 1712, Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: Experiments on choice under risk typically involve multiple decisions by individual subjects. The choice of mechanism for selecting decision(s) for payoff is an essential design feature that is often driven by appeal to the isolation hypothesis or the independence axiom. We report two experiments with 710 subjects. Experiment 1 provides the first simple test of the isolation hypothesis. Experiment 2 is a crossed design with six payoff mechanisms and five lottery pairs that can elicit four paradoxes for the independence axiom and dual independence axiom. The crossed design discriminates between: (a) behavioral deviations from postulated properties of payoff mechanisms; and (b) behavioral deviations from theoretical implications of alternative decision theories. Experiment 2 provides tests of the isolation hypothesis and four paradoxes. It also provides data for tests for portfolio effect, wealth effect, reduction, adding up, and cross-task contamination. Data from Experiment 2 suggest that a new mechanism introduced herein may be less biased than random selection of one decision for payoff.

Keywords: Isolation; mechanisms; paradoxes; independence; dual independence; cross-task contamination; portfolio effect; wealth effect; reduction; adding-up (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/49389/1/663967422.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Paradoxes and mechanisms for choice under risk (2015)
Working Paper: Paradoxes and Mechanisms for Choice under Risk (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:1712

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().