Investment Behavior under Ambiguity: The Case of Pessimistic Decision Makers

Alexander Ludwig and Alexander Zimper

No 04-31, Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications from Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim

Abstract: We define pessimistic, respectively optimistic, investors as CEU (Choquet expected utility) decision makers who update their pessimistic, respectively optimistic, beliefs according to a pessimistic (Dempster-Shafer), respectively optimistic, update rule. This paper then demonstrates that, in contrast to optimistic investors, pessimistic investors may strictly prefer investing in an illiquid asset to investing in a liquid asset. Key to our result is the dynamic inconsistency of CEU decision making, implying that a CEU decision maker ex ante prefers a different strategy with respect to prematurely liquidating an uncertain long-term investment project than after learning her liquidity needs. Investing in an illiquid asset then serves as a commitment device guaranteeing an ex ante favorable outcome.

Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2004-09-13
Note: We thank Jürgen Eichberger, Itzhak Gilboa, and Nicolas Nalpas for helpful suggestions. Moreover, we appreciate the feedback from participants at FUR XI, Paris. Financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 504, at the University of Mannheim and from the Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft is gratefully acknowledged.
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sfb504.uni-mannheim.de/publications/dp04-31.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.sfb504.uni-mannheim.de:80 (nodename nor servname provided, or not known)

Related works:
Journal Article: Investment behavior under ambiguity: The case of pessimistic decision makers (2006)
Working Paper: Investment Behavior under Ambiguity: The Case of Pessimistic Decision Makers (2004)
Working Paper: Investment behavior under ambiguity: the case of pessimistic decision makers (2004)
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:xrs:sfbmaa:04-31

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications from Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim Contact information at EDIRC., Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Carsten Schmidt ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).