Alternation bias and reduction in St. Petersburg gambles

Kim Kaivanto and Eike Kroll

No 65600286, Working Papers from Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department

Abstract: Reduction of compound lotteries is implicit both in the statement of the St. Petersburg Paradox and in its resolution by Expected Utility (EU).We report three real-money choice experiments between truncated compound-form St. Petersburg gambles and their reduced-form equivalents. The first tests for differences in elicited Certainty Equivalents. The second develops the distinction between ‘weak-form’ and ‘strong-form’ rejection of Reduction, as well as a novel experimental task that verifiably implements Vernon Smith’s dominance precept. The third experiment checks for robustness against range and increment manipulation. In all three experiments the null hypothesis of Reduction is rejected, with systematic deprecation of the compound form in favor of the reduced form. This is consistent with the predictions of alternation bias. Together these experiments offer evidence that the Reduction assumption may have limited descriptive validity in modelling St. Petersburg gambles, whether by EU or non-EU theories.

Keywords: St. Petersburg Paradox; reduction axiom; alternation bias; dominance precept; law of small numbers; test of indifference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lan:wpaper:65600286

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