Preference for hope: A behavioral definition

Zhuo Chen

Economics Letters, 2022, vol. 221, issue C

Abstract: Hope is the emotional feeling experienced when a desired outcome happens with a positive probability. This article provides a behavioral definition of preference for hope. The definition requires the decision maker to have two behavioral patterns: hope preservation by delaying the resolution of uncertainty, and hope-seeking by taking risk. I show that if people have a preference for hope, then it violates simultaneously the axiom of time neutrality, dynamic consistency and expected stationarity.

Keywords: Hope; Risk taking; Resolution of uncertainty; Dynamic consistency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:221:y:2022:i:c:s0165176522003949

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110920

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