Painful Regret and Elation at the Track

We present an empirical study of loss aversion in the Hong Kong horse betting market. We provide evidence of the presence of loss aversion in a context of complete absence of the favourite-longshot bias. This would suggest that, since loss aversion is a psychological bias, the favourite-longshot bias may not necessarily be caused by psychological issues and may be due, for instance, to informational asymmetry. We investigate different types of bettors and their attitude towards loss aversion. Our data set enables us to distinguish approximately among insiders, unsophisticated outsiders and sophisticated outsiders. The results show clearly that even sophisticated bettors are beset by loss aversion, while even unsophisticated outsiders display no favourite-longshot bias. Thus, our paper provides evidence that loss aversion may be an attitude innate rather than learned, regardless of the level of sophistication in designing economic behaviour or the extent of information asymmetry. Chen et al (2006) show that capuchin monkeys display biases when faced with gambles, including loss aversion, and provide evidence that loss aversion extends beyond humans. The present work supports the idea that loss aversion may be a more universal bias, arising regardless of experience and culture and demonstrates that loss aversion is displayed even by those bettors regarded in the market as “smart money”. Further, we find that more sophisticated and experienced bettors display a higher level of loss aversion. This result is consistent with the findings of Haigh and List (2005), who show that professional traders in financial markets exhibit more loss aversion than do students.

Price Competition over Boundedly Rational Agents

We develop a model to study market interaction between rational firms on one side of the market and boundedly rational consumers on the other. A special feature of bounded rationality is modelled here: from psychological evidence, people tend to group events or numbers into categories; therefore we consider consumers who partition the price space into connected sets and regard each price belonging to the same set as equal. According to Rubinstein (1993), we endogenize the choice of the price partition by consumers, who determine the optimal price partition given the constraint imposed on their ability to process information on prices. We develop a model with two firms and two states of nature. We show that we depart from classical Bertrand result when consumers are characterized by a bound on the finiteness of price partition inferior to the cardinality of the space of world states. In other words, in presence of consumers who can partition the price space into two sets and with two states of the world, firms find optimal to set price above marginal cost, making positive profits. The intuition of the result can be explained as follows: when a consumer chooses the price partition, she faces a trade off between the detection of the state of nature and the detection of a deviating behavior of the firm in a given state of nature

Prospect Theory and the Law of Small Numbers in the Evaluation of Asset Prices

We develop a model of one representative agent and one asset. The agent evaluates the earnings according to Prospect Theory and he does not know exactly the stochastic process generating earnings. While the earnings are generated by a random walk process, the agent considers a Markovian process, according to which firm’s earnings move between two regimes, represented by a mean-reverting process and a trend process, as in Barberis, Shleifer and Vishny (1998). We study how an agent who is loss averse evaluates the price of a stock when she takes into account the wrong stochastic process. This twofold departure from rationality determines permanent effects on stock prices, even in long run. First, the model shows that agent who evaluates the asset according to Prospect Theory consistently underestimates the asset, due to loss aversion bias. This is shown under two different assumption regarding the functional form of utility. A kinked linear utility function (as in Bernatzi and Thaler, 1985) and the original and more general specification of Kahneman and Tversky (1979) are used. The model allows to explain observed phenomenon in the cross-section earnings return distribution. We solve this model and according to Barberis et all (1998), we evaluate the framework by using artificial data sets of earnings and prices simulated from the model. For plausible range of parameter values, it generates the empirical predictions of overreaction and underreaction observed in the data are explained

Experimentation and Disappointment

We depart from the classic setting of bandit problems by endowing the agent with a disappointment-elation utility function. The disutility of a loss is assumed to be greater than the elation associated with same-size gain, according to Kahneman-Tversky findings on the attitude of agents towards a change in wealth. We characterise the optimal experimentation strategy of an agent in a two-armed bandit problem setting with infinite horizon and we derive an existence theorem, specifying a condition on the disappointment aversion parameter. The model, solved in closed form in a one-armed bandit setting, shows that an agent who feels disappointment experiments more intensively than the agent characterised by the standard expected utility model, despite disappointment, but only if the degree of disappointment is under a certain threshold level. The threshold level depends both on the probability of rewards along the unknown projects relative to the expected number of trials and on the expected reward of the unknown project

Prospect theory and the law of small numbers in the evaluation of asset prices

We develop a model of one representative agent and one asset. The agent evaluates the earnings according to Prospect Theory and he does not know exactly the stochastic process generating earnings. While the earnings are generated by a random walk process, the agent considers a Markovian process, according to which firm’s earnings move between two regimes, represented by a mean-reverting process and a trend process, as in Barberis, Shleifer and Vishny (1998). We study how an agent who is loss averse evaluates the price of a stock when she takes into account the wrong stochastic process. This twofold departure from rationality determines permanent effects on stock prices, even in long run. First, the model shows that agent who evaluates the asset according to Prospect Theory consistently underestimates the asset, due to loss aversion bias. This is shown under two different assumption regarding the functional form of utility. A kinked linear utility function (as in Bernatzi and Thaler, 1985) and the original and more general specification of Kahneman and Tversky (1979) are used. The model allows to explain observed phenomenon in the cross-section earnings return distribution. We solve this model and according to Barberis et all (1998), we evaluate the framework by using artificial data sets of earnings and prices simulated from the model. For plausible range of parameter values, it generates the empirical predictions of overreaction and underreaction observed in the data are explained

Credit risk and Basel II: Are non-profit firms financially different?

We estimate a model of credit risk for portfolios of Small and Medium-sized enterprises, conditional on being a non-profit or for-profit firms. The estimation is based on a unique dataset on Italian firms provided by a large commercial bank. We show that the main variables to identify creditworthiness are different for non-profit andcrucial for non-profit firms. Classification-JEL: G21, G28SME finance; Basel II; Retail banking; Non-profit

Self-Defeating Subsidiarity

In this paper we analyze the factors that should be considered when allocating a given policy function at a particular level of government and how these factors affect the growth and evolution of multi-level governments. After discussing the interplay of economies of scale, economies of scope, and heterogeneity of preferences in determining the optimal level of legal intervention, we show that the subsidiarity principle can have mixed effects as a firewall against progressive centralization. Our economic model of subsidiarity reveals that once some functions become centralized, further centralization becomes easier and often unavoidable. Contrary to its intended function, a piecemeal application of the subsidiarity principle can trigger a path-dependent avalanche of centralization, turning subsidiarity into a self-defeating statement of principle

Accuracy of Verdicts under Different Jury Sizes and Voting Rules

Juries are a fundamental element of the criminal justice system. In this article, we model jury decision making as a function of two institutional variables: jury size and voting requirement. We expose the critical interdependence of these two elements in minimizing the probabilities of wrongful convictions, of wrongful acquittals, and of hung juries. We find that the use of either large nonunanimous juries or small unanimous juries offers alternative ways to maximize the accuracy of verdicts while preserving the functionality of juries. Our framework, which lends support to the elimination of the unanimity requirement in the presence of large juries, helps appraise US Supreme Court decisions and state legal reforms that have transformed the structure of American juries