Skip to content Skip to navigation
University of Warwick
  • Study
  • |
  • Research
  • |
  • Business
  • |
  • Alumni
  • |
  • News
  • |
  • About

University of Warwick
Publications service & WRAP

Highlight your research

  • WRAP
    • Home
    • Search WRAP
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse WRAP by Year
    • Browse WRAP by Subject
    • Browse WRAP by Department
    • Browse WRAP by Funder
    • Browse Theses by Department
  • Publications Service
    • Home
    • Search Publications Service
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse Publications service by Year
    • Browse Publications service by Subject
    • Browse Publications service by Department
    • Browse Publications service by Funder
  • Help & Advice
University of Warwick

The Library

  • Login
  • Admin

Reexamining how utility and weighting functions get their shapes : a quasi-adversarial collaboration providing a new interpretation

Tools
- Tools
+ Tools

Alempaki, Despoina, Canic, Emina, Mullett, Timothy L., Skylark, William J., Starmer, Chris, Stewart, Neil and Tufano, Fabio (2019) Reexamining how utility and weighting functions get their shapes : a quasi-adversarial collaboration providing a new interpretation. Management Science, 65 (10). pp. 4841-4862. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2018.3170 ISSN 0025-1909.

[img]
Preview
PDF
WRAP-Reexamining-utility-weighting-functions-shapes-providing-2019.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer.
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

Download (2558Kb) | Preview
[img] PDF
WRAP-Re-examining-utility-weighting-functions-shapes-Stewart-2018.pdf - Accepted Version
Embargoed item. Restricted access to Repository staff only - Requires a PDF viewer.

Download (2551Kb)
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3170

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

Stewart, Reimers and Harris (2015, SRH hereafter) demonstrated that shapes of utility and probability weighting functions could be manipulated by adjusting the distributions of outcomes and probabilities on offer, as predicted by the theory of Decision by Sampling. So marked were these effects that, at face value, they profoundly challenge standard interpretations of preference theoretic models where such functions are supposed to reflect stable properties of individual risk preferences. Motivated by this challenge, we report an extensive replication exercise based on a series of experiments conducted as a quasi-adversarial collaboration across different labs and involving researchers from both economics and psychology. We replicate the SRH effect across multiple experiments involving changes in many design features; importantly, however, we find that the effect is also present in designs modified so that Decision by Sampling predicts no effect. While those results depend on model-based inferences, an alternative analysis using a model free comparison approach finds no evidence of patterns akin to the SRH effect. On the basis of simulation exercises, we demonstrate that the SRH effect may be a consequence of misspecification biases arising in parameter recovery exercises that fit imperfectly specified choice models to experimental data. Overall, our analysis casts the SRH effect in an entirely new light.

Item Type: Journal Article
Divisions: Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > Behavioural Science
Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School
Journal or Publication Title: Management Science
Publisher: Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (I N F O R M S)
ISSN: 0025-1909
Official Date: October 2019
Dates:
DateEvent
October 2019Published
31 July 2019Available
2 July 2018Accepted
Volume: 65
Number: 10
Page Range: pp. 4841-4862
DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2018.3170
Status: Peer Reviewed
Publication Status: Published
Access rights to Published version: Open Access (Creative Commons)
Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019, The Author(s)
Date of first compliant deposit: 13 July 2018
Date of first compliant Open Access: 12 June 2019
Is Part Of: This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council grant numbers ES/N018192/1, ES/K002201/1, and ES/P008976/1 and Leverhulme Trust grant RP2012-V-022
Related URLs:
  • Publisher
  • Other Repository
  • Other Repository

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics

twitter

Email us: wrap@warwick.ac.uk
Contact Details
About Us