Governments and their regulatory agencies normally exhibit risk-neutral attitudes in their decision-making. However, for low probability-high consequence events many decision-makers tend to be risk-averse because of the catastrophic or dire nature of the hazard or event. The degree of risk averseness can be described by utility theory. This paper will infer utility functions that reflect the le...

Engineering decisions are invariably made under substantial uncertainty about current and future system cost and response, including cost and response associated with low-probability, highconsequence events. A risk-neutral decision maker would rely on expected values when comparing designs, while a risk-averse decision maker might adopt nonlinear utility functions or failure probability criteri...

This paper reports the results of a detailed investigation of the risk-averse and loss-averse behaviour of UK individual investors. An one-period analytical model of investing behaviour is developed to explore the differences between individuals who are risk averse, and those whose behaviour is better described by Kahneman & Tversky’s Prospect Theory. Questionnaire data on risk perceptions is u...

We examine risk attitudes under regret theory and derive analytical expressions for two components—the resolution and regret premiums—of the risk premium under regret theory. We posit that regret-averse decision makers are risk seeking (resp., risk averse) for low (resp., high) probabilities of gains and that feedback concerning the forgone option reinforces risk attitudes. We test these hypoth...

An auction with a buyout option occurring over continuous time with rules similar to eBay’s “buy it now” option is analyzed. It is shown that a risk averse seller facing risk neutral bidders will choose a buyout price low enough so that the buyout option is exercised with positive probability in equilibrium. Further, when the seller is risk averse and bidders are risk neutral, allowing the sell...

It is often suggested that when opinions differ among individuals in a group, the should be aggregated to form compromise. This paper compares two approaches aggregating opinions, linear pooling and what I call opinion agglomeration. In evaluating both strategies, propose pragmatic criterion, No Regrets, entailing an aggregation strategy prevent groups from buying selling bets on events at pric...