Publié en 2004, l’ouvrage de l’historienne américaine Londa Schiebinger opère un rapprochement suggestif entre l’histoire des sciences, l’histoire du genre et l’histoire coloniale. À travers l’étude de la « bioprospection » dans l’espace caraïbe des xviie et xviiie siècles (Jamestown, Virginie, Bahia, Brésil, Jamaïque, Guyane, Surinam, Saint-Domingue) l’auteure aborde les facteurs culturels qui interviennent dans la transmission des savoirs naturalistes et pharmaceutiques entre indigènes et a...

This paper introduces the likelihood method for decision under uncertainty. The method allows the quantitative determination of subjective beliefs or decision weights without invoking additional separability conditions, and generalizes the Savage–de Finetti betting method. It is applied to a number of popular models for decision under uncertainty. In each case, preference foundations result from the requirement that no inconsistencies are to be revealed by the version of the likelihood method appropriate for the model considered. A unified treatment of subjective decision (...) weights results for most of the decision models popular today. Savage’s derivation of subjective expected utility can now be generalized and simplified. In addition to the intuitive and empirical contributions of the likelihood method, we provide a number of technical contributions: We generalize Savage’s nonatomiticy condition (“P6”) and his assumption of (sigma) algebras of events, while fully maintaining his flexibility regarding the outcome set. Derivations of Choquet expected utility and probabilistic sophistication are generalized and simplified similarly. The likelihood method also reveals a common intuition underlying many other conditions for uncertainty, such as definitions of ambiguity aversion and pessimism. (shrink)

Prospect theory is increasingly used to explain deviations from the traditional paradigm of rational agents. Empirical support for prospect theory comes mainly from laboratory experiments using student samples. It is obviously important to know whether and to what extent this support generalizes to more naturally occurring circumstances. This article explores this question and measures prospect theory for a sample of private bankers and fund managers. We obtained clear support for prospect theory. Our financial professionals behaved according to prospect theory and (...) violated expected utility maximization. They were risk averse for gains and risk seeking for losses and their utility was concave for gains and convex for losses. They were also averse to losses, but less so than commonly observed in laboratory studies and assumed in behavioral finance. A substantial minority focused on gains and largely ignored losses, behavior reminiscent of what caused the current financial crisis. (shrink)

Uchiyama et al. describe how a more complete measurement of the dynamic nature of culture could help us unmask the true richness of genetic effects on behaviour. I underscore this notion here by reflecting on the role that the dynamic relationship between culture and DNA has played in our evolutionary history and will play in our evolutionary future.

Burt's argument relies on a motte-and-bailey fallacy. Burt aims to argue against the value of genetics for social science; instead she argues against certain interpretations of a specific kind of genetics tool, polygenic scores (PGSs). The limitations, previously identified by behavioural geneticists including ourselves, do not negate the value of PGSs, let alone genetics in general, for social science.

In this article, we elicit both individuals’ and couples’ preferences assuming prospect theory (PT) as a general theoretical framework for decision under risk. Our experimental method, based on certainty equivalents, allows to infer measurements of utility and probability weighting at the individual level and at the couple level. Our main results are twofold. First, risk attitude for couples is compatible with PT and incorporates deviations from expected utility similar to those found in individual decision making. Second, couples’ attitudes towards risk (...) are found to be consistent with a mix of individual attitudes, women being more influent on couples’ preferences at low probability levels. (shrink)

Risk attitude is known to be a key determinant of various economic and financial choices. Behavioral studies that aim to evaluate the role of risk attitudes in contexts of this type, therefore, require tools for measuring individual risk tolerance. Recent developments in decision theory provide such tools. However, the methods available can be time consuming. As a result, some practitioners might have an incentive to prefer “fast and frugal” methods to clean but more costly methods. In this article, we focus (...) on a tractable procedure initially proposed by Holt and Laury (2002) to elicit risk attitude. We generalize this method to measure utility and risk aversion as follows. First, we allow measurement of probabilistic risk attitude through violations of expected utility due to probability weighting. Second, we use the outcome scale rather than the probability scale in the menu of choices. Third, we compare sure payoffs with lotteries instead of comparing non-degenerate lotteries. A within-subject experimental study illustrates the gains in tractability and bias minimization that can result from such an extension. (shrink)

Various experimental procedures aimed at measuring individual risk aversion involve a list of pairs of alternative prospects. We first study the widely used method by Holt and Laury :1644–1655, 2002), for which we find that the removal of some items from the lists yields a systematic decrease in risk aversion and scrambles the ranking of individuals by risk aversion. This bias, that we call embedding bias, is quite distinct from other confounds that have been previously observed in the use of (...) the HL method. It may be related to empirical phenomena and theoretical developments where better prospects increase risk aversion. Nevertheless, we also find that the more recent elicitation method due to Abdellaoui et al., also based on lists but using only one and the same probability in the list, does not display any statistically significant bias when the corresponding items of the list are removed. Our results suggest that methods other than the popular HL one may be preferable for the measurement of risk aversion. (shrink)

PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS IN THE LAW is the perfect introduction to the philosophy of law. This collection of articles and cases helps you consider philosophical problems associated with the law through examples, case studies, and decision scenarios. Case examples and recent decisions such as Boumediene v. Bush (rights of Guantanamo detainees) and Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (freedom of expression and violent video games) coupled with new readings help you see the real-world relevance of what you are learning.