IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/mateco/v55y2014icp15-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal lottery

Author

Listed:
  • Dennery, Charles
  • Direr, Alexis

Abstract

This article proposes an equilibrium approach to lottery markets in which a firm designs an optimal lottery to rank-dependent expected utility (RDU) consumers. We show that a finite number of prizes cannot be optimal, unless implausible utility and probability weighting functions are assumed. We then investigate the conditions under which a probability density function can be optimal. With standard RDU preferences, this implies a discrete probability on the ticket price, and a continuous probability on prizes afterwards. Under some preferences consistent with experimental literature, the optimal lottery follows a power-law distribution, with a plausibly extremely high degree of prize skewness.

Suggested Citation

  • Dennery, Charles & Direr, Alexis, 2014. "Optimal lottery," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 15-23.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:mateco:v:55:y:2014:i:c:p:15-23
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmateco.2014.09.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304406814001219
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jmateco.2014.09.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Diecidue, Enrico & Wakker, Peter P, 2001. "On the Intuition of Rank-Dependent Utility," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 281-298, November.
    2. repec:dau:papers:123456789/2348 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Han Bleichrodt & Olivier L’Haridon, 2008. "A tractable method to measure utility and loss aversion under prospect theory," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 245-266, June.
    4. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    5. Han Bleichrodt & Jose Luis Pinto, 2000. "A Parameter-Free Elicitation of the Probability Weighting Function in Medical Decision Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(11), pages 1485-1496, November.
    6. Chateauneuf, Alain & Dana, Rose-Anne & Tallon, Jean-Marc, 2000. "Optimal risk-sharing rules and equilibria with Choquet-expected-utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 191-214, October.
    7. Nicholas Barberis & Ming Huang, 2008. "Stocks as Lotteries: The Implications of Probability Weighting for Security Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 2066-2100, December.
    8. Quiggin, John, 1982. "A theory of anticipated utility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 323-343, December.
    9. Harry M. Markowitz, 2010. "Portfolio Theory: As I Still See It," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, December.
    10. Camerer, Colin F & Ho, Teck-Hua, 1994. "Violations of the Betweenness Axiom and Nonlinearity in Probability," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 167-196, March.
    11. Fennema, Hein & van Assen, Marcel, 1998. "Measuring the Utility of Losses by Means of the Tradeoff Method," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 277-295, December.
    12. Kent Grote & Victor Matheson, 2011. "The Economics of Lotteries: A Survey of the Literature," Working Papers 1109, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    13. Chateauneuf, Alain & Dana, Rose-Anne & Tallon, Jean-Marc, 2000. "Optimal risk-sharing rules and equilibria with Choquet-expected-utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 191-214, October.
    14. Erik Snowberg & Justin Wolfers, 2010. "Explaining the Favorite-Long Shot Bias: Is it Risk-Love or Misperceptions?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(4), pages 723-746, August.
    15. Nicholas Barberis, 2012. "A Model of Casino Gambling," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(1), pages 35-51, January.
    16. Nicholas Barberis, 2013. "The Psychology of Tail Events: Progress and Challenges," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 611-616, May.
    17. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5461 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Diecidue, Enrico & Schmidt, Ulrich & Zank, Horst, 2009. "Parametric weighting functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 1102-1118, May.
    19. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Han Bleichrodt & Corina Paraschiv, 2007. "Loss Aversion Under Prospect Theory: A Parameter-Free Measurement," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(10), pages 1659-1674, October.
    20. G. Carlier & R. Dana, 2008. "Two-persons efficient risk-sharing and equilibria for concave law-invariant utilities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 36(2), pages 189-223, August.
    21. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier L’Haridon & Horst Zank, 2010. "Separating curvature and elevation: A parametric probability weighting function," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 39-65, August.
    22. Nathalie Etchart-Vincent, 2004. "Is Probability Weighting Sensitive to the Magnitude of Consequences? An Experimental Investigation on Losses," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 217-235, May.
    23. Lattimore, Pamela K. & Baker, Joanna R. & Witte, Ann D., 1992. "The influence of probability on risky choice: A parametric examination," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 377-400, May.
    24. Garrett, Thomas A. & Sobel, Russell S., 1999. "Gamblers favor skewness, not risk: Further evidence from United States' lottery games," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 85-90, April.
    25. George Wu & Richard Gonzalez, 1996. "Curvature of the Probability Weighting Function," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(12), pages 1676-1690, December.
    26. Pamela K. Lattimore & Joanna R. Baker & A. Dryden Witte, 1992. "The Influence Of Probability on Risky Choice: A parametric Examination," NBER Technical Working Papers 0081, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    27. Milton Friedman & L. J. Savage, 1948. "The Utility Analysis of Choices Involving Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56, pages 279-279.
    28. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier l’Haridon & Horst Zank, 2009. "Separating Curvature and Elevation: A Parametric Weighting Function," Economics Discussion Paper Series 0901, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    29. Quiggin, John, 1991. "On the Optimal Design of Lotteries," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 58(229), pages 1-16, February.
    30. Mohammed Abdellaoui, 2000. "Parameter-Free Elicitation of Utility and Probability Weighting Functions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(11), pages 1497-1512, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexis DIRER, 2010. "Equilibrium Lottery Games and Preferences Under Risk," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 550, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten & Meyer, Steffen & Hackethal, Andreas, 2019. "Taming models of prospect theory in the wild? Estimation of Vlcek and Hens (2011)," SAFE Working Paper Series 146, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2019.
    2. Peter Brooks & Simon Peters & Horst Zank, 2014. "Risk behavior for gain, loss, and mixed prospects," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(2), pages 153-182, August.
    3. Nathalie Etchart-Vincent, 2009. "Probability weighting and the ‘level’ and ‘spacing’ of outcomes: An experimental study over losses," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 45-63, August.
    4. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten, 2017. "On the applicability of maximum likelihood methods: From experimental to financial data," SAFE Working Paper Series 148, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2017.
    5. Martina Nardon & Paolo Pianca, 2019. "Behavioral premium principles," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 42(1), pages 229-257, June.
    6. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier L'Haridon & Corina Paraschiv, 2011. "Experienced vs. Described Uncertainty: Do We Need Two Prospect Theory Specifications?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(10), pages 1879-1895, October.
    7. Kpegli, Yao Thibaut & Corgnet, Brice & Zylbersztejn, Adam, 2023. "All at once! A comprehensive and tractable semi-parametric method to elicit prospect theory components," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    8. Jinrui Pan & Craig S. Webb & Horst Zank, 2019. "Delayed probabilistic risk attitude: a parametric approach," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(2), pages 201-232, September.
    9. Webb, Craig S. & Zank, Horst, 2011. "Accounting for optimism and pessimism in expected utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 706-717.
    10. Miles S. Kimball & Collin B. Raymond & Jiannan Zhou & Junya Zhou & Fumio Ohtake & Yoshiro Tsutsui, 2024. "Happiness Dynamics, Reference Dependence, and Motivated Beliefs in U.S. Presidential Elections," NBER Working Papers 32078, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. George Wu & Alex B. Markle, 2008. "An Empirical Test of Gain-Loss Separability in Prospect Theory," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(7), pages 1322-1335, July.
    12. Horst Zank, 2010. "On probabilities and loss aversion," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 68(3), pages 243-261, March.
    13. Ariane Charpin, 2018. "Tests des modèles de décision en situation de risque. Le cas des parieurs hippiques en France," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 69(5), pages 779-803.
    14. Luís Santos-Pinto & Adrian Bruhin & José Mata & Thomas Åstebro, 2015. "Detecting heterogeneous risk attitudes with mixed gambles," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 79(4), pages 573-600, December.
    15. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Emmanuel Kemel, 2014. "Eliciting Prospect Theory When Consequences Are Measured in Time Units: “Time Is Not Money”," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1844-1859, July.
    16. Eyal Baharad & Doron Kliger, 2013. "Market failure in light of non-expected utility," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(4), pages 599-619, October.
    17. Alexis DIRER, 2010. "Equilibrium Lottery Games and Preferences Under Risk," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 550, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.
    18. Diecidue, Enrico & Schmidt, Ulrich & Zank, Horst, 2009. "Parametric weighting functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 1102-1118, May.
    19. Han Bleichrodt & Ulrich Schmidt & Horst Zank, 2009. "Additive Utility in Prospect Theory," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(5), pages 863-873, May.
    20. Adam Booij & Bernard Praag & Gijs Kuilen, 2010. "A parametric analysis of prospect theory’s functionals for the general population," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 68(1), pages 115-148, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:mateco:v:55:y:2014:i:c:p:15-23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jmateco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.