Safety-First Criteria and Their Measures of Risk

Abstract

A cardinal measure of risk which represents the safety-first criteria is defined. The functional form of that measure is determined for a subgroup of risk-averse agents that do not have money illusion. An empirical illustration of possible applications of that measure shows a method of identifying the subgroup of agents for which a given alternative dominates the others—in a group of risky alternatives when none of these alternatives dominates any of the others according to the first and the second criteria of stochastic dominance. Copyright 1996, Oxford University Press.