Reexamining How Utility and Weighting Functions Get Their Shapes: A Quasi-Adversarial Collaboration Providing a New Interpretation
Reexamining How Utility and Weighting Functions Get Their Shapes: A Quasi-Adversarial Collaboration Providing a New Interpretation
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DOI：
10.1287/mnsc.2018.3170
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发表时间：
2019-10-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
Tufano, Fabio
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Alempaki, Despoina;Canic, Emina;Tufano, Fabio
在2015年发表在《管理科学》上的一篇论文中，斯图尔特、赖默斯和哈里斯（SRH）证明，效用和概率加权函数的形状可以通过调整抽样决策理论预测的结果和概率分布来操纵。这些效应如此显著，以至于从表面上看，它们深刻地挑战了偏好理论模型的标准解释，在这些模型中，这些函数应该反映个人风险偏好的稳定属性。出于这一挑战的动机，我们报告了一系列实验的基础上进行了广泛的复制练习，这些实验是在不同实验室之间进行的准对抗性合作，涉及经济学和心理学的研究人员。我们在多个实验中复制SRH效应，这些实验涉及许多设计特征的变化;然而，重要的是，我们发现这种效应也存在于修改后的设计中，因此通过抽样进行的决策预测没有影响。虽然这些结果依赖于基于模型的推论，但使用无模型比较方法的替代分析没有发现类似于SRH效应的模式的证据。在模拟练习的基础上，我们证明了SRH效应可能是在参数恢复练习中出现的错误指定偏差的后果，这些练习将不完全指定的选择模型与实验数据相匹配。总的来说，我们的分析将SRH效应置于一个全新的视角。
In a paper published in Management Science in 2015, Stewart, Reimers, and Harris (SRH) demonstrated that shapes of utility and probability weighting functions could be manipulated by adjusting the distributions of outcomes and probabilities on offer as predicted by the theory of decision by sampling. So marked were these effects that, at face value, they profoundly challenge standard interpretations of preference theoretic models in which such functions are supposed to reflect stable properties of individual risk preferences. Motivated by this challenge, we report an extensive replication exercise based on a series of experiments conducted as a quasi-adversarial collaboration across different labs and involving researchers from both economics and psychology. We replicate the SRH effect across multiple experiments involving changes in many design features; importantly, however, we find that the effect is also present in designs modified so that decision by sampling predicts no effect. Although those results depend on model-based inferences, an alternative analysis using a model-free comparison approach finds no evidence of patterns akin to the SRH effect. On the basis of simulation exercises, we demonstrate that the SRH effect may be a consequence of misspecifkation biases arising in parameter recovery exercises that fit imperfectly specified choice models to experimental data. Overall, our analysis casts the SRH effect in an entirely new light.