[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_4856.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Behavioral Indifference Curves

Author

Listed:
  • John Komlos
Abstract
According to the endowment effect there is some discomfort associated with giving up a good, that is to say, we are willing to give up something only if the price is greater than the price we are willing to pay for it. This implies that the indifference curves should designate a reference point at the current level of consumption. Such indifference maps are kinked at the current level of consumption. The kinks in the curves imply that the utility function is not differentiable everywhere and the budget constraint does not always have a unique tangent with an indifference curve. Thus, price changes may not bring about changes in consumption which may be the reason for the frequent stickiness of prices, wages and interest rates. We also discuss a multiple period example in which the indifference map shifts as the reference point shifts implying that the curves cross over time even though tastes do not change.

Suggested Citation

  • John Komlos, 2014. "Behavioral Indifference Curves," CESifo Working Paper Series 4856, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4856
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4856.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jack L. Knetsch & J. A. Sinden, 1984. "Willingness to Pay and Compensation Demanded: Experimental Evidence of an Unexpected Disparity in Measures of Value," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(3), pages 507-521.
    2. Ori Heffetz & John A. List, 2014. "Is The Endowment Effect An Expectations Effect?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(5), pages 1396-1422, October.
    3. Knetsch, Jack L, 1989. "The Endowment Effect and Evidence of Nonreversible Indifference Curves," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(5), pages 1277-1284, December.
    4. Knetsch, Jack L. & Riyanto, Yohanes E. & Zong, Jichuan, 2012. "Gain and Loss Domains and the Choice of Welfare Measure of Positive and Negative Changes," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(4), pages 1-18, December.
    5. Andersen, Torben M., 1998. "Persistency in sticky price models," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 593-603, May.
    6. Carlton, Dennis W, 1986. "The Rigidity of Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 637-658, September.
    7. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1325-1348, December.
    8. Ausubel, Lawrence M, 1991. "The Failure of Competition in the Credit Card Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 50-81, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ronald Schettkat, 2020. "Micro-Foundations of Diverging Economic Policies: Keynesian, Behavioural, Neoclassic," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 55(2), pages 105-111, March.
    2. Ronald Schettkat, 2018. "Animal Spirits - Die Verhaltensökonomischen Grundlagen der Keynesschen Theorie," Schumpeter Discussion Papers sdp18008, Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library.
    3. Ronald Schettkat, 2018. "Revision or Revolution? A Note on Behavioral vs. Neoclassical Economics," Schumpeter Discussion Papers sdp18005, Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library.
    4. Ronald Schettkat, 2018. "The Behavioral Economics of John Maynard Keynes," Schumpeter Discussion Papers sdp18007, Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brown, Thomas C. & Morrison, Mark D. & Benfield, Jacob A. & Rainbolt, Gretchen Nurse & Bell, Paul A., 2015. "Exchange asymmetry in experimental settings," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 104-116.
    2. Jose Apesteguia & Miguel Ballester, 2009. "A theory of reference-dependent behavior," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 40(3), pages 427-455, September.
    3. Ulrich Schmidt & Stefan Traub, 2009. "An Experimental Investigation of the Disparity Between WTA and WTP for Lotteries," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 66(3), pages 229-262, March.
    4. Anbarci, Nejat & Arin, K. Peren & Kuhlenkasper, Torben & Zenker, Christina, 2018. "Revisiting loss aversion: Evidence from professional tennis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 1-18.
    5. Summers, Barbara & Duxbury, Darren, 2012. "Decision-dependent emotions and behavioral anomalies," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 226-238.
    6. Ebo Botchway & Jan Verpooten & Ine van der Beken & Justina Baršytė & Siegfried Dewitte, 2023. "The Endowment Effect in the Circular Economy: Do Broken Products Face Less of a Trading Barrier Than Intact or Repaired Ones?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-19, August.
    7. Jacobs Martin, 2016. "Accounting for Changing Tastes: Approaches to Explaining Unstable Individual Preferences," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(2), pages 121-183, August.
    8. María del Pilar García Pachón, 2016. "Instrumentos Económicos Y Financieros Para La Gestión Ambiental," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Derecho, number 853, July.
    9. William S. Neilson & Michael McKee & Robert P. Berrens, 2013. "Value and outcome uncertainty as explanations for the WTA vs WTP disparity," Chapters, in: John A. List & Michael K. Price (ed.), Handbook on Experimental Economics and the Environment, chapter 6, pages 171-189, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Banzhaf, H. Spencer, 2016. "Constructing markets: environmental economics and the contingent valuation controversy," MPRA Paper 78814, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Roth, Gerrit, 2006. "Predicting the Gap between Willingness to Accept and Willingness to Pay," Munich Dissertations in Economics 4901, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    12. Santosh Anagol & Vimal Balasubramaniam & Tarun Ramadorai, 2018. "Endowment Effects in the Field: Evidence from India’s IPO Lotteries," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(4), pages 1971-2004.
    13. Michal Maimaran, 2003. "Reducing the Reluctance to Exchange Gambles," Discussion Paper Series dp341, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    14. Schubert, Christian, 2017. "Green nudges: Do they work? Are they ethical?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 329-342.
    15. Eitan Hourie & Miki Malul & Raphael Bar-El, 2018. "The Value of Job Security: Does Having It Matter?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 1131-1145, October.
    16. D'Orlando, Fabio & Ferrante, Francesco, 2009. "The demand for job protection: Some clues from behavioural economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 104-114, January.
    17. Domenico Moramarco & Bram De Rock, 2022. "Nonparametric analysis of heterogeneous multidimensional fairness," Working Papers 621, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    18. D'Orlando, Fabio & Ferrante, Francesco, 2015. "The benefits of stabilization policies revisited," MPRA Paper 67321, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. John List, 2020. "Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the Coase theorem," Natural Field Experiments 00687, The Field Experiments Website.
    20. Mandel, David R., 2002. "Beyond mere ownership: transaction demand as a moderator of the endowment effect," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 737-747, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    behavioral economics; indifference curves; endowment effect; reference state; gain and loss equivalence; stickiness of prices and wages;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A20 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - General
    • B50 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - General
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4856. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.