IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kud/kuieci/1998-18.html

Testing the Intransitivity Explanation of the Allais Paradox

Author

Listed:
  • Ebbe Groes

    (Institute of Economics, University of Copenhagen)

  • Hans Jørgen Jacobsen

    (Institute of Economics, University of Copenhagen)

  • Birgitte Sloth

    (Institute of Economics, University of Copenhagen)

  • Torben Tranæs

    (Institute of Economics, University of Copenhagen)

Abstract

This paper uses a two-dimensional version of a standard common consequence experiment to test the intransitivity explanation of Allais-paradox-type violations of expected utility theory. We compare the common consequence effect of two choice problems differing only with respect to whether alternatives are statistically correlated or independent. We framed the experiment so that intransitive preferences could explain violating behavior when alternatives are independent, but not when they are correlated. We found the same pattern of violation in the two cases. This is evidence against intransitivity as an explanation of the Allais Paradox. The question whether violations of expected utility are mainly due to intransitivity or to violation of independence is important since it is exactly on this issue the main new decision theories differ.

Suggested Citation

  • Ebbe Groes & Hans Jørgen Jacobsen & Birgitte Sloth & Torben Tranæs, 1997. "Testing the Intransitivity Explanation of the Allais Paradox," CIE Discussion Papers 1998-18, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Industrial Economics, revised Oct 1998.
    • Handle: RePEc:kud:kuieci:1998-18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    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:kud:kuieci:1998-18. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Thomas Hoffmann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciekudk.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.