IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lec/leecon/05-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Insurance and Probability Weighting Functions

Author

Listed:
  • Ali al-Nowaihi
  • Sanjit Dhami

Abstract

Evidence shows that (i) people overweight low probabilities and underweight high probabilities, but (ii) ignore events of extremely low probability and treat extremely high probability events as certain. Decision models, such as rank dependent utility (RDU) and cumulative prospect theory (CP), use probability weighting functions. Existing probability weighting functions incorporate (i) but not (ii). Our contribution is threefold. First, we show that this would lead people, even in the presence of fixed costs and actuarially unfair premiums, to insure fully against losses of sufficiently low probability. This is contrary to the evidence. Second, we introduce a new class of probability weighting functions, which we call higher order Prelec probability weighting functions, that incorporate (i) and (ii). Third, we show that if RDU or CP are combined with our new probability weighting function, then a decision maker will not buy insurance against a loss of sufficiently low probability; in agreement with the evidence. We also show that our weighting function solves the St. Petersburg paradox that reemerges under RDU and CP.

Suggested Citation

  • Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2005. "Insurance and Probability Weighting Functions," Discussion Papers in Economics 05/19, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester, revised Sep 2006.
    • Handle: RePEc:lec:leecon:05/19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.le.ac.uk/economics/research/RePEc/lec/leecon/dp05-19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2010. "Probability Weighting Functions," Discussion Papers in Economics 10/10, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Is insurance irrational?
      by chris dillow in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2006-04-22 18:49:45

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Sanjit Dhami & Ali al-Nowaihi, 2006. "Hang ’em with probability zero: Why does it not work?," Discussion Papers in Economics 06/14, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    2. Ali al-Nowaihi & Ian Bradley & Sanjit Dhami, 2006. "The Utility Function Under Prospect Theory," Discussion Papers in Economics 06/15, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.

    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. Sanjit Dhami & Ali al-Nowaihi, 2007. "Optimal income taxation in the presence of tax evasion: Expected utility versus prospect theory," Discussion Papers in Economics 07/10, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    2. Dhami, Sanjit & al-Nowaihi, Ali, 2013. "An extension of the Becker proposition to non-expected utility theory," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 10-20.
    3. Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2010. "Composite Prospect Theory: A proposal to combine ‘prospect theory’ and ‘cumulative prospect theory’," Discussion Papers in Economics 10/11, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    4. Charles Bellemare & Sabine Kröger & Kouamé Marius Sossou, 2018. "Reporting probabilistic expectations with dynamic uncertainty about possible distributions," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 153-176, October.
    5. Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2010. "The Behavioral Economics of Insurance," Discussion Papers in Economics 10/12, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester, revised Apr 2010.
    6. Changbo Zhu & Ke Zhou & Fengzhen Tang & Yandong Tang & Xiaoli Li & Bailu Si, 2022. "A Hierarchical Bayesian Model for Inferring and Decision Making in Multi-Dimensional Volatile Binary Environments," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(24), pages 1-35, December.
    7. Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2008. "A general theory of time discounting: The reference-time theory of intertemporal choice," Discussion Papers in Economics 08/22, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    8. Bernedo Del Carpio, María & Alpizar, Francisco & Ferraro, Paul J., 2022. "Time and risk preferences of individuals, married couples and unrelated pairs," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    9. Svetlozar Rachev & Frank J. Fabozzi & Boryana Racheva-Iotova & Abootaleb Shirvani, 2017. "Option Pricing with Greed and Fear Factor: The Rational Finance Approach," Papers 1709.08134, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2020.
    10. Martín Egozcue & Luis Fuentes García & Ričardas Zitikis, 2023. "The Slicing Method: Determining Insensitivity Regions of Probability Weighting Functions," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 61(4), pages 1369-1402, April.
    11. Sanjit Dhami & Ali al-Nowaihi, 2010. "The Behavioral Economics of Crime and Punishment," Discussion Papers in Economics 10/14, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester, revised Jul 2010.
    12. Dhami, Sanjit & al-Nowaihi, Ali, 2007. "Why do people pay taxes? Prospect theory versus expected utility theory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 171-192, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Decision making under risk; Prelec’s probability weighting function; Higher order Prelec probability weighting functions; Behavioral economics; Rank dependent utility theory; Prospect theory; Insurance; St. Petersburg paradox;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C60 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - General
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:lec:leecon:05/19. 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: Abbie Sleath (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deleiuk.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.