efficient diversification according to stochastic dominance criteria this paper develops the first operational tests of portfolio efficiency based on the general stochastic dominance sd criteria that account for an infinite set of diversification strategies the main insight is to preserve the cross sectional dependence of asset returns when forming portfolios by reexpressing the sd criteria int dimensional euclidean space with elements representing rates of return int different states of nature we characterize subsets of this state space that dominate a given evaluated return vector by first and second order sd this allows us to derive simple sd efficiency measures and test statistics computable by standard mathematical programming algorithms the sd tests and efficiency measures are illustrated by an empirical application that analyzes industrial diversification of the market portfolio

garp for kids on the development of rational choice behavior in this paper we examine the extent to which consumption choices by 7 and 11 year old children and college undergraduates satisfy the axioms of revealed preference we find that choices by even the 7 year olds are considerably more likely to obey revealed preference axioms than would be true if they were choosing randomly 11 year olds do better still while college students do no better than 11 year old children we also find that mathematical ability is not correlated with choosing rationally we argue that this evidence suggests that the ability to choose rationally is not innate but that it does develop quickly

an experiment on the pure theory of consumer s behaviour by checking whether consumer demand satisfies the axioms of revealed preference one can test the empirical validity of the neoclassical theory of consumer behaviour however applying the axioms to actual consumer purchase data is difficult if not impossible since it poses serious problems of both a methodological and a practical nature after commenting on the few existing empirical studies in this field we summarise the results from an experimental approach to revealed preference theory data were obtained through a controlled experiment that involved real consumption of the goods chosen we find that most subjects violated the axioms

a theory of disappointment aversion an axiomatic model of preferences over lotteries is developed it is shown that this model is consistent with the allais paradox includes expected utility theory as a special case and is only one parameter beta richer than the expected utility model allais paradox type behavior is identified with positive values of beta preferences with positive beta are said to be disappointment averse it is shown that risk aversion implies disappointment aversion and that the arrow pratt measures of risk aversion can be generalized in a straight forward manner to the current framework copyright 1991 by the econometric society

full scale real tests of consumer behavior using experimental data abstract this paper reports on the results of three experiments based on the neoclassical theory of consumer behavior all these experiments were carried out with the aim of simulating real world behavior nonparametric tests applying the theory of revealed preference show that a significant number of individuals exhibit inconsistent behavior if nearly optimizing behavior is postulated then most of these inconsistencies disappear but random choices produce almost the same results the hypothesis of a representative consumer statistical average behavior seems a more fruitful approach

non parametric tests of consumer behaviour the neoclassical model of consumer behaviour postulates that a consumer s choice behaviour can be described as deriving from utility maximization subject to a budget constraint one is then naturally led to ask what this model implies about observed behaviour this question has been addressed from two quite distinct approaches the first approach originating in the work of slutsky 1915 and antonelli 1886 derives necessary and sufficient conditions involving the derivatives of the demand functions the second approach originating in the work of samuelson 1938 1947 1948 derives algebraic conditions on the demand functions implied by maximizing behaviour

the arbitrage principle in financial economics abstract the importance of arbitrage conditions in financial economics has been recognized since modigliani and miller s classic work on the financial structure of the firm they showed that if a f

do rational demand functions differ from irrational ones evidence from an induced budget experiment various studies e g becker 1962 ariely et al 2003 have noted anomalies concerning the relationship between observed demand and the preferences presumed to motivate it we re examine these findings using experimental choice data after separating our subjects choices into rational and irrational subsets based on consistency with the axioms of revealed preference we estimate and compare demand coefficients mirroring ariely et al s coherently arbitrary choice both rational and irrational demand estimates exhibit negative price and positive endowment coefficients however a comparison of the full set of demand coefficients indicates significant differences between the two yielding an observable artefact of the preference hypothesis relaxing the goodness of fit of the revealed preference test afriat 1987 varian 1994 does not alter our findings

how basic are behavioral biases evidence from capuchin monkey trading behavior behavioral economics has demonstrated systematic decision making biases in both lab and field data do these biases extend across contexts cultures or even species we investigate this question by introducing fiat currency and trade to a colony of capuchin monkeys and recovering their preferences over a range of goods and gambles we show that capuchins react rationally to both price and wealth shocks but display several hallmark biases when faced with gambles including reference dependence and loss aversion given our capuchins inexperience with money and trade these results suggest that loss aversion extends beyond humans and may be innate rather than learned

revealing preferences graphically an old method gets a new tool kit because uncertainty is endemic in a wide variety of economic circumstances models of decision making under uncertainty play a key role in every field of economics the standard model of decisions under uncertainty is based on von neumann and morgenstern expected utility theory eut so it is natural that experimentalists should want to test the empirical validity of the savage axioms on which eut is based empirical violations of eut provoke intriguing questions about the rationality of individual behavior and at the same time raise criticisms about the status of the savage axioms as the touchstone of rationality these criticisms have generated the development of various theoretical alternatives to eut and the investigation of these theories has led to new empirical regularities for the most part these experimental investigations use several pairwise choices a la allais to test eut and its various alternatives such as weighted utility implicit expected utility and prospect theory among others each of these theories gives rise to indifference curves with distinctive shapes in some part of the marschak machina probability triangle so each theory can be tested against the others by choosing alternatives that the various theories rank differently in these studies the criterion used to evaluate a theory is the fraction of choices it predicts correctly generally speaking experimental work has on the one hand collected only a few decisions from each subject and on the other presented subjects with a serious of choices designed to compare the predictive abilities of competing theories or discover violations of specific axioms colin f camerer 1995 and chris starmer 2000 review the experimental and theoretical work that focuses on evaluating non eut theories although this practice is understandable given the purposes for which the experiments were designed critics say that it limits the usefulness of the data for other purposes first while these experiments reveal that violations exist they give us little sense of how important they are or how frequently they

comparative risk aversion a formal approach with applications to saving behavior we consider a formal approach to comparative risk aversion and applies it to intertemporal choice models this allows us to ask whether standard classes of utility functions such as those inspired by kihlstrom and mirman 1974 selden 1978 epstein and zin 1989 and quiggin 1982 are well ordered in terms of risk aversion moreover opting for this model free approach allows us to establish new general results on the impact of risk aversion on savings behaviors in particular we show that risk aversion enhances precautionary savings clarifying the link that exists between the notions of prudence and risk aversion

stochastic dominance and expected utility survey and analysis while stochastic dominance has been employed in various forms as early as 1932 it has only been since 1969 1970 that the notion has been developed and extensively employed in the area of economics finance agriculture statistics marketing and operations research in this survey the first second and third order stochastic dominance rules are discussed with an emphasis on the development in the area since the 1980s

nonparametric comparative revealed risk aversion abstract we introduce a nonparametric method to compare risk aversion of different investors based on revealed preference methods using yaari s 1969 50 definition of more risk averse than we show that it is sufficient to compare the revealed preference relations of two investors this makes the approach operational the central rationalisability theorem provides strong support for this approach we also provide a measure of economic significance to quantify the differences in risk aversion which can also help to interpret differences in risk aversion in parametric models the approach is an alternative or complement to parametric approaches and a robustness check as a necessary first step towards this comparative approach we show how to test data for consistency with stochastic dominance relations which can also be used to recover larger parts of preferences we include an application to experimental data by choi et al 2007 10 11 which demonstrates the potential of the comparative approach

public selection and financing of r d cooperative projects credit versus subsidy funding abstract in this article we develop an analytical model of the selection process for r d cooperative projects to study the factors that motivate public project selection and corresponding funding using two different financial instruments subsidies and credits for this purpose we propose a three stage empirical strategy to analyse the differential individual effects of several factors on the decisions taken by the public agency this analysis is based on project level data from cooperative r d project calls under the spanish profit initiative for the period 2000 2003 the main results show that the public agency uses the two financial instruments to address different objectives first some projects close to the market are well supported through credits while basic research projects receive only selective support in the form of subsidies second there is significant diversity in the selection and funding of technological areas third regarding the explicit goal of fostering cooperation the public agency selectively favours partnerships with universities and technology institutes through the award of subsidies however there seems to be less incentive for large consortia fourth there are significant regional differences among financed projects and also our data show sharp yearly fluctuations

a comprehensive approach to revealed preference theory we develop a version of afriat s theorem that is applicable in a variety of choice environments beyond the setting of classical consumer theory this allows us to devise tests for rationalizability in environments where the set of alternatives is not the positive orthant of a euclidean space and where the rationalizing utility function is required to satisfy properties appropriate to that environment we show that our results are applicable amongst others to choice data on lotteries contingent consumption and intertemporal consumption

r d subsidies external collaborative breadth differential gains and the role of collaboration experience abstract external collaboration breadth is important for firms to acquire the knowledge needed to innovate in this paper we combine cross sectional and longitudinal data from the spanish panel of technological innovation survey pitec to examine the indirect impact of r d subsidies on firm external collaboration breadth we contribute to understanding of the indirect impacts of r d subsidies by first providing strong evidence of an economically significant average positive impact of r d subsidies on firm external collaboration breadth second our results advance understanding of the differential impacts of r d subsidies by revealing the vast heterogeneity of the impact at the firm level where approximately only half of treated firms experience a positive collaboration impact from r d subsidies while the remainder experience no impact or a negative effect finally we advance understanding of the characteristics explaining the differential impact of r d subsidies on external collaboration breadth by utilising the organisational learning literature to demonstrate the important role of firm collaboration experience

behavioural additionality of r d subsidies a learning perspective the use of r d grants as a policy instrument has been motivated by economic arguments of market failure neo classical econometric studies have analysed the additionality of one euro of subsidies on both the investments of companies in the r d process and the output of that r d process more recently behavioural additionality has been launched as a third form of additionality in contrast to input and output additionality behavioural additionality is related to changes in the processes that take place within the firm in this paper we analyse the determinants of the behavioural additionality of r d grants to explain the mechanism through which behavioural additionality is obtained we use organizational learning theory as a guide to formulate our hypotheses hypotheses are tested using a telephone survey of 192 recipients of r d grants provided by the iwt in flanders in 2001 2004 matched to a sample of 84 firms that undertake innovation activities but which had never had a grant bid accepted we find that congenital learning and interorganizational learning lead to increased behavioural additionality however these learning effects decrease with the number of subsidized projects that are undertaken by the company

consistency and heterogeneity of individual behavior under uncertainty by using graphical representations of simple portfolio choice problems we generate a very rich dataset to study behavior under uncertainty at the level of the individual subject we test the data for consistency with the maximization hypothesis and we estimate preferences using a two parameter utility function based on faruk gul 1991 this specification provides a good interpretation of the data at the individual level and can account for the highly heterogeneous behaviors observed in the laboratory the parameter estimates jointly describe attitudes toward risk and allow us to characterize the distribution of risk preferences in the population

a definition of uncertainty aversion a definition of uncertainty or ambiguity aversion is proposed it is argued that the definition is well suited to modelling within the savage as opposed to anscombe and aumann domain of acts the defined property of uncertainty aversion has intuitive empirical content behaves well in specific models of preference multiple priors and choquet expected utility and is tractable tractability is established through use of a novel notion of differentiability for utility functions called eventwise differentiability

on the in efficiency of swiss hospitals the efficiency of hospitals is of interest to health insurers government authorities and hospital management itself however econometric methods for determining in efficiency have severe drawbacks since hospitals are multiproduct firms and because the duality between production and cost functions cannot be assumed in this work non parametric deterministic data envelopment analysis dea is used to measure the relative inefficiency of 89 swiss hospitals covering the years 1993 1996 310 observations special attention is given to the role of patient days in the production of health the findings depend on whether patient days are viewed as an input of patient time or as an output as in previous studies while the probability of a unit being inefficient cannot be explained using the available data the degree of overall inefficiency is shown to significantly depend on the financial incentives faced by management in particular due to subsidization private hospitals do not seem to be less inefficien

ambiguity made precise a comparative foundation the theory of subjective expected utility has been recently extended to allow ambiguity to matter for choice we propose a notion of absolute ambiguity aversion by building on a notion of comparative ambiguity aversion we characterize it for a preference model which encompasses some of the most popular models in the literature we next build on these ideas to provide a definition of unambiguous act and event and show the characterization of the latter as an illustration we consider the classical ellsberg 3 color urn problem and find that the notions developed in the paper provide intuitive answers journal of economic literature classification number d81

the paradox of openness appropriability external search and collaboration a b s t r a c t to innovate firms often need to draw from and collaborate with a large number of actors from outside their organization at the same time firms need also to be focused on capturing the returns from their innovative ideas this gives rise to a paradox of openness the creation of innovations often requires openness but the commercialization of innovations requires protection based on econometric analysis of data from a uk innovation survey we find a concave relationship between firms breadth of external search and formal collaboration for innovation and the strength of the firms appropriability strategies we show that this concave relationship is stronger for breadth of formal collaboration than for external search there is also partial evidence suggesting that the relationship is less pronounced for both external search and formal collaboration if firms do not draw ideas from or collaborate with competitors we explore the implications of these findings for the literature on open innovation and innovation strategy 2013 the authors published by elsevier b v all rights reserved

networks as the pipes and prisms of the market1 this article draws an analytical distinction between two types of market uncertainty egocentric which refers to a focal actor s uncertainty regarding the best way to convert a set of inputs to an output desired by a potential exchange partner and altercentric which denotes the uncertainty confronted by a focal actor s exchange partners regarding the quality of the output that the focal actor brings to the market given this distinction the article considers how the value of structural holes and market status vary with these two types of uncertainty the article proposes that the value of structural holes increases with egocentric uncertainty but not with altercentric uncertainty in contrast the value of status increases with altercentric uncertainty but declines with egocentric uncertainty thus actors with networks rich in structural holes should sort into markets or market segments that are high in egocentric uncertainty high status actors should sort into markets that are low in egocentric