IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/155.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A quantitative and qualitative test of the Allais paradox using health outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Oliver, Adam

Abstract

There have been many tests of the descriptive validity of the axioms of expected utility theory (EU) using money outcomes. Such tests are relatively uncommon with respect to health outcomes. This is unfortunate, because the standard gamble - considered by many health economists to be the gold standard for cardinal health state value assessment - is implied from the axioms of EU. In this paper, the classic Allais paradox, which predicts a systematic violation of the independence axiom, is tested in the context of health outcomes. Seventeen of 38 participants demonstrated strict violations of independence, with 14 of these violating in the direction predicted by Allais. The violations were thus significant and systematic. Moreover, the participants’ qualitative explanations for their behaviour show seemingly rational and not inconsistent reasoning for the violations. This evidence offers a further challenge to the descriptive validity of EU, and underlines the need to test alternative theories of risk and uncertainty in the context of health outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Oliver, Adam, 2003. "A quantitative and qualitative test of the Allais paradox using health outcomes," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 155, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:155
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/155/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1991. "Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1039-1061.
    2. Camerer, Colin & Weber, Martin, 1992. "Recent Developments in Modeling Preferences: Uncertainty and Ambiguity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 325-370, October.
    3. 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.
    4. George Wu & Richard Gonzalez, 1996. "Curvature of the Probability Weighting Function," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(12), pages 1676-1690, December.
    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. Oliver, Adam, 2003. "The internal consistency of the standard gamble: tests after adjusting for prospect theory," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 659-674, July.
    2. Stefan A. Lipman & Arthur E. Attema, 2019. "Rabin's paradox for health outcomes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(8), pages 1064-1071, August.
    3. Oliver, Adam, 2003. "The internal consistency of the standard gamble: tests after adjusting for prospect theory," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 159, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Bleichrodt, Han & Quiggin, John, 2013. "Capabilities as menus: A non-welfarist basis for QALY evaluation," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 128-137.
    5. Oliver, Adam & Sunstein, Cass, 2019. "Does size matter? The Allais paradox and preference reversals with varying outcome magnitudes," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 91130, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Demuynck, Thomas & Lauwers, Luc, 2009. "Nash rationalization of collective choice over lotteries," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 1-15, January.
    7. Adam Oliver & Richard Cookson, 2010. "Analysing risk attitudes to time," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(6), pages 644-655, June.
    8. Valerie F. Reyna, 2011. "The Paradoxes of Maurice Allais in Economics and Psychology," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 31(2), pages 221-222, March.
    9. Oliver, Adam & Sunstein, Cass, 2019. "Does size matter? The Allais paradox and preference reversals with varying outcome magnitudes," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 45-60.
    10. Khalil, Elias L., 2015. "Temptations as Impulsivity: How far are Regret and the Allais Paradox from Shoplifting?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 551-559.
    11. Brazier, J & Dolan, P, 2005. "Evidence of preference construction in a comparison of variants of the standard gamble method," MPRA Paper 29760, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Kolnhofer-Derecskei Anita, 2017. "The Indifferent, the Good Samaritan, the Brave and the Agent in Allais Paradox situation – or How Endowment Effect Influences Our Decision in Case of Allais Paradox?," Organizacija, Sciendo, vol. 50(4), pages 299-313, December.

    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. George Wu, 1999. "Anxiety and Decision Making with Delayed Resolution of Uncertainty," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 159-199, April.
    2. Oliver, Adam, 2003. "The internal consistency of the standard gamble: tests after adjusting for prospect theory," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 159, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Craig R. Fox & Amos Tversky, 1998. "A Belief-Based Account of Decision Under Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(7), pages 879-895, July.
    4. Li, Yan & Yang, Liyan, 2013. "Prospect theory, the disposition effect, and asset prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 715-739.
    5. Michael Kilka & Martin Weber, 2001. "What Determines the Shape of the Probability Weighting Function Under Uncertainty?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(12), pages 1712-1726, December.
    6. Kuhberger, Anton & Schulte-Mecklenbeck, Michael & Perner, Josef, 1999. "The Effects of Framing, Reflection, Probability, and Payoff on Risk Preference in Choice Tasks, ," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 78(3), pages 204-231, June.
    7. Kluger, Avraham N. & Stephan, Elena & Ganzach, Yoav & Hershkovitz, Meirav, 2004. "The effect of regulatory focus on the shape of probability-weighting function: Evidence from a cross-modality matching method," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 20-39, September.
    8. Özalp Özer & Yanchong Zheng, 2016. "Markdown or Everyday Low Price? The Role of Behavioral Motives," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(2), pages 326-346, February.
    9. Ajay Kalra & Mengze Shi, 2002. "Consumer Value-Maximizing Sweepstakes & Contests: A Theoretical and Experimental Investigation," Review of Marketing Science Working Papers 1-3-1008, Berkeley Electronic Press.
    10. Rapoport, Amnon & Chung Lo, Alison King & Zwick, Rami, 2002. "Choice of Prizes Allocated by Multiple Lotteries with Endogenously Determined Probabilities," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 180-206, January.
    11. M. Levy, 2010. "Loss aversion and the price of risk," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(9), pages 1009-1022.
    12. José Lara Resende & George Wu, 2010. "Competence effects for choices involving gains and losses," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 109-132, April.
    13. Haim Levy & Moshe Levy, 2021. "Prospect theory, constant relative risk aversion, and the investment horizon," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-21, April.
    14. Ran Kivetz, 2003. "The Effects of Effort and Intrinsic Motivation on Risky Choice," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(4), pages 477-502, December.
    15. Horst Zank, 2010. "On probabilities and loss aversion," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 68(3), pages 243-261, March.
    16. George Wu & Richard Gonzalez, 1999. "Nonlinear Decision Weights in Choice Under Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(1), pages 74-85, January.
    17. Davies, G.B. & Satchell, S.E., 2004. "Continuous Cumulative Prospect Theory and Individual Asset Allocation," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0467, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    18. Erel Avineri, 2006. "The Effect of Reference Point on Stochastic Network Equilibrium," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(4), pages 409-420, November.
    19. Sophie Steelandt & Marie-Hélène Broihanne & Amélie Romain & Bernard Thierry & Valérie Dufour, 2013. "Decision-Making under Risk of Loss in Children," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(1), pages 1-10, January.
    20. Simone Cerreia‐Vioglio & David Dillenberger & Pietro Ortoleva, 2015. "Cautious Expected Utility and the Certainty Effect," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 693-728, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Allais paradox; Expected Utility theory; Health outcomes; Independence; Standard gamble. JEL classification: C91; I19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • I19 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Other

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ehl:lserod:155. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    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.