PERSONAL PROJECTS
Risk aversion and risk-taking behavior using the Binary Lottery Procedure
(Kahneman & Tversy's Prospect Theory, 1979)
The Binary Lottery Procedure (BLP) is supposed to manipulate individuals' risk preferences. Through the manipulation of participants' utility function, the task consisted in analysing attitudes towards gains and losses by:
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First, replicating Kahneman & Tversky's prospect theory
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Then, inducing people's mind thanks to the BLP and aksing them to chose among several gambles
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Eventually collecting data on the Willigness to Pay, the Willingness to Accept
The experiment was conducted on 123 participants, at La Maison des Sciences Economiques, in May 2013, in Paris.
What emotions should be induced in order to maximize the impact of the content of a persuasive message?
To understand the impact of emotions on information processing, it will be important to recall the Somatic Marker Theory so that it will be better understandable how this theory explains the beneficial direction of emotions on information processing.
From this point, it will be legitimate to discuss what emotions should be induced in order to maximize the impact of the content of a persuasive message.
Let’s see first how emotions are processed, then what kind of emotions can be induced, and eventually how to maximize the impact of the content of a message.
Risky decisions on gains and losses with or without control of the value-function
Testing the Binary Lottery Procedure efficiency to control for risk preferences and investigating novel ways of interpreting decision-making under risk.
Positing participants’ behaviors as consistent to Prospect Theory’s elicitation, we are going to see that manipulating the value-function has an effect on decision-making. When results are not expected, this effect needs to be balanced taking into account what can be due to a failure of the method or what is attributable to the weighting of probabilities. Within the experiment, we have been able to modify the hypothesis of the utility-function. Through the BLP, we manipulated this function to change the basic assumption of risk-neutrality when responding to the BLP tasks.
Economic perspective on creativity
One major principle rules the success of investing in ideas: the Buying Low and Selling High behavior.
Investing in creativity is singular insofar that it is one of the few areas where you need to take distance with the crowd. Creativity implies something that has not been done yet, or some fields of application that have not been explored yet. Investing in ideas truly differs from investing in an asset.
But creativity can be considered as any other economic concept in the sense that it has its own resources: human capital, it has a genuine market, it seeks to increase and improve its resources from an investment perspective and it has costs and benefits, often linked to a risk-taking behavior as far as investment is concerned.
The Influence of trailers and teasers on the Willingness to Pay of movie consumers
This study proposes to use both economics and psychology literature and analysis techniques in order to understand how the Willingness to Pay of college student movie consumers is influenced whether they have watched a teaser or a trailer.
The shown movie trailers and teasers were chosen with caution and participants were tested with an online-questionnaire.
The results which were found are interesting in terms of marketing and advertising techniques for the movie infustry.
Explaining the major paradoxes and anomalies of single choices under risk and uncertainty
Plott and Zeiler explored the gap between the Willingness to Pay and the Willingness to Accept, and wanted to question its link with the endowment effect. They aimed to perform several tests to seek whether there was a consensus on the accuracy of the endowment effect or if it does not exist, but only in some cases; thus proving that there has been some misinterpretation of results in past experiments.
Homo Oeconomicus? Homo Donator?
Différences individuelles dans les conduites pro-sociales
This study, in French, explores at first a litterature review on works that derived from the Homo Eoconomicus and Homo Donator concepts.
It provides an experiment based on both economics and psychology analysis.
Conclusions fit in the wake of behavioral economics studies.
The Symbolic Power of Money:
The Case of Death Anxiety
In this report, we implement a simple experimental design to provide additional findings concerning the buffering power of money. We investigate the relationship between money and fear of death by wondering in which specific conditions money's buffering effect can be optimized.
A particular emphasis is put on the links uniting 1) cognitive implication in money making and reduction of the levels of fear of death and
2) social reward of money making and reduction of the levels of fear of death. We provide evidence that if money is a strong buffer against fear of death anxiety, the specific manner in which individuals produce money is a crucial dimension of the buffering power. We document that individuals who win money through cognitively and socially rewarding tasks benefit from higher gains in terms of fear of death reduction than participants who win money in a neutral condition.