Loss aversion

About: Loss aversion is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2898 publications have been published within this topic receiving 115198 citations.

The Nature of Risk Preferences: Evidence from Insurance Choices

Abstract: We use data on households’ deductible choices in auto and home insurance to estimate a structural model of risky choice that incorporates "standard" risk aversion (concave utility over …nal wealth), loss aversion, and nonlinear probability weighting. Our estimates indicate that nonlinear probability weighting plays the most important role in explaining the data. More speci…cally, we …nd that standard risk aversion is small, loss aversion is nonexistent, and nonlinear probability weighting is large. When we estimate restricted models, we …nd that nonlinear probability weighting alone can better explain the data than standard risk aversion alone, loss aversion alone, and standard risk aversion and loss aversion combined. Our main …ndings are robust to a variety of modeling assumptions. JEL classi…cations: D01, D03, D12, D81, G22

Plea Bargaining Outside the Shadow of Trial

Abstract: Plea-bargaining literature predicts that parties strike plea bargains in the shadows of expected trial outcomes. In other words, parties forecast the expected sentence after trial, discount it by the probability of acquittal, and offer some proportional discount. This oversimplified model ignores how structural distortions skew bargaining outcomes, causing them to diverge from trial outcomes. Part I of this Article explores the various structural forces that warp plea bargains. Agency costs, attorney compensation and workloads, resources, sentencing and bail rules, and information deficits all skew bargaining. In addition, psychological biases and heuristics warp judgments. Part II applies recent research from behavioral law and economics and cognitive psychology to critique plea bargaining. Overconfidence, denial, discounting, risk preferences, loss aversion, framing, and anchoring all affect bargaining decisions. Skilled lawyers can partly counteract some of these problems, but they can also overcompensate. The oversimplified shadow-of-trial model of plea bargaining needs to be supplemented by a structural-psychological perspective. On this perspective, uncertainty, money, self-interest, and demographic variation greatly influence plea bargains. Part III explores how to respond to the various structural and psychological influences that warp plea bargains. Reforming systems of defense counsel, bail rules, and the structure of sentencing rules, and increasing use of mediators and judges in bargaining could ameliorate some of these influences. Other problems, such as demographic variations in psychology, are very difficult to correct. These influences cast light on how civil and criminal bargaining differ in important respects.

Exchange asymmetries incorrectly interpreted as evidence of endowment effect theory and prospect theory

Abstract: Systematic asymmetries in exchange behavior have been widely interpreted as support for "endowment effect theory," an application of prospect theory positing that loss aversion and utility function kinks set by entitlements explain observed asymmetries. We experimentally test an alternative explanation, namely, that asymmetries are explained by classical preference theories finding influence through the experimental procedures typically used. Contrary to the predictions of endowment effect theory, we observe no asymmetries when we modify procedures to remove the influence of classical preference theories. When we return to traditional-type procedures, however, the asymmetries reappear. The results support explanations based in classical preference theories and reject endowment effect theory.