Salience and Skewness Preferences

Arbeitspapier

Whether people seek or avoid risks on gambling, insurance, asset, or labor markets crucially depends on the skewness of the underlying probability distribution. In fact, people typically seek positively skewed risks and avoid negatively skewed risks. We show that salience theory of choice under risk can explain this preference for positive skewness, because unlikely, but outstanding payoffs attract attention. In contrast to alternative models, however, salience theory predicts that choices under risk not only depend on the absolute skewness of the available options, but also on how skewed these options appear to be relative to each other. We exploit this fact to derive novel, experimentally testable predictions that are unique to the salience model and that we find support for in two laboratory experiments. We thereby argue that skewness preferences—typically attributed to cumulative prospect theory—are more naturally accommodated by salience theory.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 7416

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
• Subject: salience theory ; cumulative prospect theory ; skewness preferences

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Dertwinkel-Kalt, Markus ; Köster, Mats
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2018

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/198776
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET