IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1701.01427.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Rational Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Observed Betting Patterns on a Biased Coin

Author

Listed:
  • Victor Haghani
  • Richard Dewey

Abstract

What would you do if you were invited to play a game where you were given \$25 and allowed to place bets for 30 minutes on a coin that you were told was biased to come up heads 60% of the time? This is exactly what we did, gathering 61 young, quantitatively trained men and women to play this game. The results, in a nutshell, were that the majority of these 61 players did not place their bets very well, displaying a broad panoply of behaviorial and cognitive biases. About 30% of the subjects actually went bust, losing their full \$25 stake. We also discuss optimal betting strategies, valuation of the opportunity to play the game and its similarities to investing in the stock market. The main implication of our study is that people need to be better educated and trained in how to approach decision making under uncertainty. If these quantitatively trained players, playing the simplest game we can think of involving uncertainty and favourable odds, did not play well, what hope is there for the rest of us when it comes to playing the biggest and most important game of all: investing our savings? In the words of Ed Thorp, who gave us helpful feedback on our research: "This is a great experiment for many reasons. It ought to become part of the basic education of anyone interested in finance or gambling."

Suggested Citation

  • Victor Haghani & Richard Dewey, 2017. "Rational Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Observed Betting Patterns on a Biased Coin," Papers 1701.01427, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1701.01427
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.01427
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven D Levitt, 2021. "Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(1), pages 378-405.
    2. Powdthavee, Nattavudh & Riyanto, Yohanes E., 2012. "Why Do People Pay for Useless Advice? Implications of Gambler's and Hot-Hand Fallacies in False-Expert Setting," IZA Discussion Papers 6557, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian, 2010. "Why Does the Law of One Price Fail? An Experiment on Index Mutual Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1405-1432, April.
    4. Powdthavee, Nattavudh & Riyanto, Yohanes E., 2012. "Why do people pay for useless advice?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121779, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Joshua B. Miller & Adam Sanjurjo, 2014. "A Cold Shower for the Hot Hand Fallacy," Working Papers 518, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    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. Skjold, Benjamin & Steinkamp, Simon Richard & Hulme, Oliver J & Peters, Ole & Connaughton, Colm, 2023. "Are risk preferences optimal?," OSF Preprints ew2sx, Center for Open Science.

    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. Leuermann, Andrea & Roth, Benjamin, 2012. "Does good advice come cheap? - On the assessment of risk preferences in the lab and the field," Working Papers 0534, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    2. Ibrahim Filiz & Thomas Nahmer & Markus Spiwoks & Kilian Bizer, 2018. "Portfolio diversification: the influence of herding, status-quo bias, and the gambler’s fallacy," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 32(2), pages 167-205, May.
    3. Andrea Leuermann & Benjamin Roth, 2012. "Does Good Advice Come Cheap?: On the Assessment of Risk Preferences in the Lab and in the Field," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 475, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    4. David M. Ritzwoller & Joseph P. Romano, 2019. "Uncertainty in the Hot Hand Fallacy: Detecting Streaky Alternatives to Random Bernoulli Sequences," Papers 1908.01406, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2021.
    5. Charles Cao & Grant Farnsworth & Hong Zhang, 2021. "The Economics of Hedge Fund Startups: Theory and Empirical Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(3), pages 1427-1469, June.
    6. Jeffrey R. Brown & Nellie Liang & Scott Weisbenner, 2007. "Individual Account Investment Options and Portfolio Choice: Behavioral Lessons from 401(k) Plans," NBER Chapters, in: Public Policy and Retirement, Trans-Atlantic Public Economics Seminar (TAPES), pages 1992-2013, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Margaret Miller & Julia Reichelstein & Christian Salas & Bilal Zia, 2015. "Can You Help Someone Become Financially Capable? A Meta-Analysis of the Literature," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 220-246.
    8. Alisdair McKay, 2011. "Household Saving Behavior and Social Security Privatization," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2011-027, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    9. Gu, Yiquan & Rasch, Alexander & Wenzel, Tobias, 2022. "Consumer salience and quality provision in (un)regulated public service markets," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    10. Beshears, John & Choi, James J. & Laibson, David & Madrian, Brigitte C., 2011. "Behavioral economics perspectives on public sector pension plans," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 315-336, April.
    11. Beshears, John & Choi, James J. & Laibson, David & Madrian, Brigitte C., 2013. "Simplification and saving," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 130-145.
    12. Gil-Bazo, Javier & Ruiz-Verdú, Pablo, 2006. "Yet another puzzle? the relation between price and performance in the mutual fund industry," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB wb066519, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    13. John Beshears & James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian, 2017. "Does Aggregated Returns Disclosure Increase Portfolio Risk Taking?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 1971-2005.
    14. Eric Zitzewitz, 2014. "Retail Securities Regulation in the Aftermath of the Bubble," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Regulation and Its Reform: What Have We Learned?, pages 545-588, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Brigitte C. Madrian, 2014. "Applying Insights from Behavioral Economics to Policy Design," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 663-688, August.
    16. Mussida Chiara & Zanin Luca, 2019. "Voluntary Mobility of Employees for Better Job Opportunities Given a Temporary Contract: Insights Regarding an Age-Varying Association Between the Two Events," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-27, April.
    17. Cici, Gjergji & Kempf, Alexander & Peitzmeier, Claudia, 2022. "Knowledge spillovers in the mutual fund industry through labor mobility," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    18. Mark Duggan & Patrick Healy & Fiona Scott Morton, 2008. "Providing Prescription Drug Coverage to the Elderly: America's Experiment with Medicare Part D," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 69-92, Fall.
    19. Jonathan D. Ketcham & Claudio Lucarelli & Eugenio J. Miravete & M. Christopher Roebuck, 2012. "Sinking, Swimming, or Learning to Swim in Medicare Part D," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2639-2673, October.
    20. Gabriel Leite Mota, 2022. "Unsatisfying ordinalism: The breach through which happiness (re)entered economics," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(3), pages 513-528, June.

    More about this item

    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:arx:papers:1701.01427. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.