IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

Decision-making under uncertainty - A field study of cumulative prospect theory

Author Info

  • Gurevich, Gregory
  • Kliger, Doron
  • Levy, Ori

Abstract

The presented research tests cumulative prospect theory (CPT, [Kahneman, D., Tversky, A., 1979. Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica 47, 263-291; Tversky, A., Kahneman, D., 1981. The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science 211, 453-480]) in the financial market, using US stock option data. Option prices possess information about actual investors' preferences in such a way that an exploitation of conventional option analysis, along with theoretical relationships, makes it possible to elicit investor preferences. The option data in this study serve for estimating the two essential elements of the CPT, namely, the value function and the probability weighting function. The main part of the work focuses on the functions' simultaneous estimation under CPT original parametric specification. The shape of the estimated functions is found to be in line with theory. Comparing to results of laboratory experiments, the estimated functions are closer to linearity and loss aversion is less pronounced.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378-4266(09)00004-1
Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Banking & Finance.

Volume (Year): 33 (2009)
Issue (Month): 7 (July)
Pages: 1221-1229

as
in new window

Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:33:y:2009:i:7:p:1221-1229
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf

Keywords: Cumulative prospect theory Value function Probability weighting function Loss aversion;

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as in new window
  1. Breeden, Douglas T & Litzenberger, Robert H, 1978. "Prices of State-contingent Claims Implicit in Option Prices," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(4), pages 621-51, October.
  2. Kliger, Doron & Kudryavtsev, Andrey, 2008. "Reference point formation by market investors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(9), pages 1782-1794, September.
  3. Venezia, Itzhak & Shapira, Zur, 2007. "On the behavioral differences between professional and amateur investors after the weekend," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(5), pages 1417-1426, May.
  4. Martijn Cremers & Joost Driessen & Pascal Maenhout & David Weinbaum, 2004. "Individual Stock-Option Prices and Credit Spreads," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2391, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Jan 2005.
  5. Klaus Abbink & Bettina Rockenbach, 2005. "Option Pricing by Students and Professional Traders: A Behavioural Investigation," Discussion Papers 2005-12, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
  6. Mohammed Abdellaoui, 2000. "Parameter-Free Elicitation of Utility and Probability Weighting Functions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(11), pages 1497-1512, November.
  7. Hayne E. Leland., 1979. "Who Should Buy Portfolio Insurance?," Research Program in Finance Working Papers 95, University of California at Berkeley.
  8. Jens Carsten Jackwerth., 1996. "Recovering Risk Aversion from Option Prices and Realized Returns," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-265, University of California at Berkeley.
  9. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Lo, Andrew W., 2000. "Nonparametric risk management and implied risk aversion," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 9-51.
  10. Gurdip Bakshi & Nikunj Kapadia & Dilip Madan, 2003. "Stock Return Characteristics, Skew Laws, and the Differential Pricing of Individual Equity Options," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(1), pages 101-143.
  11. Kroll, Yoram & Levy, Haim & Rapoport, Amnon, 1988. "Experimental Tests of the Separation Theorem and the Capital Asset Pricing Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(3), pages 500-519, June.
  12. 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.
  13. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1979. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk," Levine's Working Paper Archive 7656, David K. Levine.
  14. Constantinides, George M, 1982. "Intertemporal Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers and without Demand Aggregation," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(2), pages 253-67, April.
  15. George Wu & Richard Gonzalez, 1996. "Curvature of the Probability Weighting Function," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(12), pages 1676-1690, December.
  16. Edwards, Kimberley D., 1996. "Prospect theory: A literature review," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 19-38.
  17. Hibbert, Ann Marie & Daigler, Robert T. & Dupoyet, Brice, 2008. "A behavioral explanation for the negative asymmetric return-volatility relation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 2254-2266, October.
  18. Cox, John C. & Ross, Stephen A., 1976. "The valuation of options for alternative stochastic processes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1-2), pages 145-166.
  19. 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.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as in new window


Cited by:

  1. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Han Bleichrodt & Hilda Kammoun, 2013. "Do financial professionals behave according to prospect theory? An experimental study," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 74(3), pages 411-429, March.
  2. Y.E. Arisoy, 2010. "Volatility risk and the value premium : evidence from the french stock market," Post-Print hal-00576551, HAL.
  3. Fortin, Ines & Hlouskova, Jaroslava, 2011. "Optimal asset allocation under linear loss aversion," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 2974-2990, November.
  4. Luis A.G. Coelho, 2014. "Portfolio Selection Optimization under Cumulative Prospect Theory – a parameter sensibility analysis," CEFAGE-UE Working Papers 2014_06, University of Evora, CEFAGE-UE (Portugal).
  5. Dichtl, Hubert & Drobetz, Wolfgang, 2011. "Portfolio insurance and prospect theory investors: Popularity and optimal design of capital protected financial products," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 1683-1697, July.
  6. Daniel Cavagnaro & Mark Pitt & Richard Gonzalez & Jay Myung, 2013. "Discriminating among probability weighting functions using adaptive design optimization," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 255-289, December.
  7. Hwang, Soosung & Satchell, Steve E., 2010. "How loss averse are investors in financial markets?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2425-2438, October.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:33:y:2009:i:7:p:1221-1229. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Shamier, Wendy)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.