Measuring Risk Aversion Model-Independently

We propose a new method to elicit individuals' risk preferences. Similar to Holt and Laury (2002), we use a simple multiple price-list format. However, our method is based on a general notion of increasing risk, which allows classifying individuals as more or less risk-averse without assuming a specic utility framework. In a laboratory experiment we compare both methods. Each classies individuals almost identically as risk-averse, -neutral, or -seeking. However, classications of individuals as more or less risk-averse dier substantially. Moreover, our approach yields higher measures of risk aversion, and only with our method these measures are robust toward increasing stakes

Measuring Risk Aversion Model-Independently

We propose a new method to elicit individuals' risk preferences. Similar to Holt and Laury (2002), we use a simple multiple price-list format. However, our method is based on a general notion of increasing risk, which allows classifying individuals as more or less risk-averse without assuming a specic utility framework. In a laboratory experiment we compare both methods. Each classies individuals almost identically as risk-averse, -neutral, or -seeking. However, classications of individuals as more or less risk-averse dier substantially. Moreover, our approach yields higher measures of risk aversion, and only with our method these measures are robust toward increasing stakes.Risk Aversion; Multiple Price-List; Elicitation; Laboratory Experiment; Holt and Laury Method; Mean Preserving Spreads; Non-EUT; Increasing Risk

Embeddedness as Condition and Strategy in Contemporary Art and Cultural Production

This thesis examines the concept of ‘embeddedness’ as condition and strategy in contemporary art and cultural production. Identifying embeddedness as a motif of contextual proximity and a strategy in contemporary art, the thesis proposes immediacy to be the result of intrinsic mediation. The project’s main concern is how embeddedness is contextualised by the current conditions that authors and cultural producers engage with. The primary question is whether and how embeddedness can convey a critical relation to the mediation that it undertakes. These concerns inform and arise from my work as an artist, and my participation in events, some of which I organise. The project claims that embeddedness in art is a critical condition and an editorial concept or a strategic plan that can be set up by the artist. The investigation begins by looking at conditions of embeddedness by focusing on concepts of subjectivity and by elaborating strategies that I call ‘auto-direction’. For example, concepts of subjectivity are taken up in relation to Richard Serra’s video Boomerang (1974), in which the performer Nancy Holt reflects on her own spoken words, which are fed back with a short delay via microphone and headphones into her ears. Auto-direction, introduced with the example of Steven Spielberg’s initiative of a video diary exchange project between Israeli and Palestinian children, describes the activity of the producer, who self-directs his situated presence. Taking up idioms of embeddedness from artists like Phil Collins, Christian Jankowski and Erik van Lieshout the project examines embeddedness through a comparative analysis between contemporary art, visual culture, media theory, sociology, art theory, psychoanalysis and philosophy. These practices lead to an identification of embeddedness as an author’s immanent exposure, a claim taken up through analysis of theoretical texts and literature by Rosalind Krauss, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gregory Bateson, Hal Foster, Bernard Williams and Alfred North Whitehead

TuLiPA : a syntax-semantics parsing environment for mildly context-sensitive formalisms

In this paper we present a parsing architecture that allows processing of different mildly context-sensitive formalisms, in particular Tree-Adjoining Grammar (TAG), Multi-Component Tree-Adjoining Grammar with Tree Tuples (TT-MCTAG) and simple Range Concatenation Grammar (RCG). Furthermore, for tree-based grammars, the parser computes not only syntactic analyses but also the corresponding semantic representations

NLO QCD corrections to W+ W- b anti-b production with leptonic decays in the light of top quark mass and asymmetry measurements

We present the NLO QCD corrections to the processes p p and p anti-p to W+ W- b anti-b including leptonic decays of the W bosons. Non-resonant contributions as well as diagrams with doubly resonant and singly resonant top quark propagators are fully taken into account. We employ the narrow width approximation to perform the decays of the W bosons; spin correlations are however preserved. We also calculate observables relevant for top quark mass measurements, and study the impact of kinematical requirements and different scale choices on t anti-t asymmetries.Comment: 29 pages, 14 figures, version submitted to and accepted by JHE

Developing a TT-MCTAG for German with an RCG-based parser

Developing linguistic resources, in particular grammars, is known to be a complex task in itself, because of (amongst others) redundancy and consistency issues. Furthermore some languages can reveal themselves hard to describe because of specific characteristics, e.g. the free word order in German. In this context, we present (i) a framework allowing to describe tree-based grammars, and (ii) an actual fragment of a core multicomponent tree-adjoining grammar with tree tuples (TT-MCTAG) for German developed using this framework. This framework combines a metagrammar compiler and a parser based on range concatenation grammar (RCG) to respectively check the consistency and the correction of the grammar. The German grammar being developed within this framework already deals with a wide range of scrambling and extraction phenomena

A Model of Reference-Dependent Belief Updating

We propose a model of instrumental belief choice under loss aversion. When new information arrives, an agent is prompted to abandon her prior. However, potential posteriors may induce her to take actions that generate a lower utility in some states than actions induced by her prior. These losses loom larger than gains in other states in which potential posteriors lead to larger utility than the prior. In choosing her belief, the agent optimally trades off these psychological gains and losses against the belief's objective performance. Consistent with empirical evidence, belief updating in this model is conservative and can be asymmetric, so that bad news is updated more conservatively than good news. These updating biases generate prior-dependent information preferences, such that agents may avoid information when being unconfident but are information seeking otherwise. Because belief updating depends on the decision problem in which new information is going to be used, the model allows us to explore how these predictions change with either individual preferences or the choice context

A Note on Measuring Risk Aversion

In this paper we propose a new method to elicit the intensity of individual's risk preferences. Our method uses a simple multiple price-list format and is based on the increasing risk definitions of Rothschild and Stiglitz (1970, 1971). We are thus able to classify individuals as more or less risk-averse without assuming an expected utility framework. In a lab experiment we directly compare our method to the well-known method of Holt and Laury (2002) and find that our approach yields higher estimates of relative risk aversion that are much closer to what is observed in the field