We consider the problem of reallocating the total initial endowments of an infinitely divisible commodity among agents with single-peaked preferences. With the uniform reallocation rule we propose a solution which satisfies many appealing properties, describing the effect of population and endowment variations on the outcome. The central properties which are studied in this context are populati...

This paper looks at the problem of endowment assurances which do not meet their targets to repay residential mortgages. Through the analysis of the present value of payments under different inflation and interest-rate regimes, we conclude that the perceived problems with endowment policies may simply be a manifestation of "money illusion". Nevertheless, there could frictional problems and other...

We exhibit three non-standard cases of preference reversal (PR) between choices and valuations of bets. The endowment effect arises as a surprising consequence of the WTA/WTP disparity when the probabilities of winning get close to certainty. We consider a new theory of choice under risk, cognitive consistency (CC) theory, which can predict both standard and non-standard cases of PR, the WTA/WT...

Agents and endowments. There is a continuum of ex ante identical households, a large number of perfectly competitive financial intermediaries, and a government. As in a typical cash-inadvance economy each household splits into a worker and a shopper each period. Each period each household receives an idiosyncratic endowment y ∈ [0,∞) that is IID in the population and IID over time with density ...

This paper develops, using the revealed preference approach, a model of choice with an initial endowment and in the presence of alternatives that are grouped into categories. Our model generalizes the classical individual choice model which is rationalized by utility maximization, and reduces to that model in the absence of an initial endowment. Given an exogenous endowment, our decision maker ...

In humans, the capacity for economically rational choice is constrained by a variety of preference biases: humans evaluate gambles relative to arbitrary reference points; weigh losses heavier than equally sized gains; and demand a higher price for owned goods than for equally preferred goods that are not yet owned. To date, however, fewer studies have examined the origins of these biases. Here,...