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Offerman, T. and Palley, A. (2016). Lossed in translation: an off-the-shelf method to recover probablistic beliefs from loss-averse agents Experimental Economics, 19(1):1--30.


  • Journal
    Experimental Economics

Strictly proper scoring rules are designed to truthfully elicit subjective probabilistic beliefs from risk neutral agents. Previous experimental studies have identified two problems with this method: (i) risk aversion causes agents to bias their reports toward the probability of 1/2 , and (ii) for moderate beliefs agents simply report 1/2 . Applying a prospect theory model of risk preferences, we show that loss aversion can explain both of these behavioral phenomena. Using the insights of this model, we develop a simple off-the-shelf probability assessment mechanism that encourages loss-averse agents to report true beliefs. In an experiment, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this modification in both eliminating uninformative reports and eliciting true probabilistic beliefs.