An Allais paradox for generalized Expected Utility Theories ?
Journal article: This article reports the results of an experiment which aims at providing a test of ordinal independence, a necessary property of Generalized Expected Utility theories such as Rank-Dependent Expected Utility theory (RDEU). Our experiment is based on a modified version of the Allais paradox proposed by Machina, which allows testing ordinal independence restricted to simple lotteries, i.e. the tail-separability property. The results tend to support RDEU models since tail-separability is not violated by 71% of subjects while 73% violate the independence condition of classic Allais paradox. This confirms the relative theoretical soundness of RDEU models over Expected Utility model for the particular context of risk.
Author(s)
Laetitia Placido, Olivier L’Haridon
Journal
- Economics Bulletin
Date of publication
- 2008
Keywords
- Allais paradox
- Rank-dependent utility
Pages
- 1-6
URL of the HAL notice
Version
- 1
Volume
- 4