Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/79621 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
SFB 649 Discussion Paper No. 2013-004
Publisher: 
Humboldt University of Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649 - Economic Risk, Berlin
Abstract: 
We investigate violations of consequentialism in the form of the stochastic dominance property. The property is shared by many theories of choice and implies that the decision-maker prefers receiving the best outcome for sure over all lotteries that involve multiple outcomes. We run experiments to demonstrate that dominated randomization can be attractive. In treatments where decision-makers are asked to submit multiple decisions without knowing which one is relevant, many participants submit contradictory sets of decisions and thereby induce a dominated lottery between outcomes. Explicit choice of non-consequentialist randomization is observed in a separate treatment. A possible reason for the e ect is the desire to avoid having to make the decision. A large data set on (high-stake) university applications in Germany shows patterns that are consistent with a preference for randomization.
Subjects: 
stochastic dominance violations
individual decision making
university choice
matching
JEL: 
D03
D01
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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