The St. Petersburg Paradox despite risk-seeking preferences: An experimental study

Eike Kroll and Bodo Vogt ()
Additional contact information
Bodo Vogt: Faculty of Economics and Management, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg

No 9004, FEMM Working Papers from Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management

Abstract: The St. Petersburg is one of the oldest violations of expected utility theory. Thus far, explanations of the paradox aim at small probabili- ties being perceived as zero and the boundedness of utility. This paper provides experimental results showing that neither risk attitudes nor perception of small probabilities explain the paradox. We nd that even in situations where subjects are risk-seeking, the St. Petersburg Paradox exists. This indicates that the paradox lies at the very core of human decision-making processes and cannot be explained by the parameters discussed in previous research so far.

Pages: 6 pages
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ww.uni-magdeburg.de/fwwdeka/femm/a2009_Dateien/2009_04.pdf First version, 2009 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.ww.uni-magdeburg.de:80 (A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.)

Related works:
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:mag:wpaper:09004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in FEMM Working Papers from Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Guido Henkel ().