Seminar of Economic and Social Research College (No. 36)

Date：April 5, 2017
Time：1:30-2:45 p.m.
Venue: 106B meeting room in Zhonghui building of Jinan University
Speaker: HUANG Zhen-xing, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
Sponsor: Economic and social research college of Jinan University.
Topic: Measuring Ambiguity Attitudes for All (natural) Events

About Huang Zhenxing
Associate professor of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, he got his PhD at Tinbergen institute and Erasmus University Rotterdam, his master's degree in economics at Tinbergen economic institute and Amsterdam's free university, and his double bachelor's degree at Fudan- University of Groningen. His research filed are decision-making theory, behavioral economics, experimental economics, and financial economics. His research achievement has been published by many international famous journals, such as American Economic Review, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, etc.

Abstract:
Measurements of ambiguity attitudes have so far focused on artificial events, where subjective beliefs can be derived from symmetry assumptions. For natural events such assumptions usually are not available, creating a difficulty in calibrating subjective beliefs and, hence, in measuring ambiguity attitudes. This paper introduces a simple control for subjective beliefs even when they are unknown. We thus allow for a tractable and completely revealed-preference based measurement of ambiguity attitudes for all events, including natural ones. We introduce indexes of ambiguity aversion and ambiguity perception (or understanding) that generalize and unify many existing indexes. Our indexes are valid under many ambiguity theories. They do not require expected utility for risk, which is desirable for empirical purposes. Furthermore, they are easy to elicit in practice. An experiment on ambiguity under time pressure shows the tractability of our method. It gives plausible results, supporting the validity of our indexes.