Utility Estimation of a Set of States of Health

1977 ◽  
Vol 16 (03) ◽  
pp. 168-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. I. Card ◽  
M. Rusinkiewicz ◽  
C. I. Phillips

A decision maker was presented with three states of health, such that an imaginary patient was in the middle state while the two other states could be described as more preferred and less preferred. The decision maker was then asked to choose the minimal odds at which he would advise an operation which would result in success, the patient moving into the more preferred state, or failure, the patient moving into the less preferred state. Eight decision makers were tested in this way and each made 24 such wagers on a set of three states chosen from a total set of eight; each of these states differed unidimen sionally only in the visual acuity of the remaining eye in the imaginary patient. If the utility of I is arbitrarily assigned to the state of perfect vision, and the utility of 0 to the state of non-perception of light, estimates of the utilities of the intervening states can then be made. The utility function for each decision maker was constructed and was found to be linear against the logarithm of the visual acuity. From this it follows that if all decision makers, e.g. ophthalmic surgeons, show such linearity, they will all choose the same odds before deciding whether to operate and these odds are independent of the utilities which the individual decision maker attaches to the different states of health.

1977 ◽  
Vol 16 (03) ◽  
pp. 168-175
Author(s):  
W. I. Card ◽  
M. Rusinkiewicz ◽  
C. I. Phillips

A decision maker was presented with three states of health, such that an imaginary patient was in the middle state «‘hile the two other states could be described as more preferred and less preferred. The decision maker was then asked to choose the minimal odds at which he would advise an operation which would result in success, the patient moving into the more preferred state, or failure, the patient moving into the less preferred state. Eight decision makers were tested in this way and each made 24 such wagers on a set of three states chosen from a total set of eight; each of these states differed unidimen-sionally only in the visual acuity of the remaining eye in the imaginary patient. If the utility of 1 is arbitrarily assigned to the state of perfect vision, and the utility of 0 to the state of non-perception of light, estimates of the utilities of the intervening states can then be made. The utility function for each decision maker was constructed and was found to be linear against the logarithm of the visual acuity. From this it follows that if all decision makers, e.g. ophthalmic surgeons, show such linearity, they will all choose the same odds before deciding whether to operate and these odds are independent of the utilities which the individual decision maker attaches to the different states of health.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 303-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyeon Park

AbstractThis paper studies the making of risky choices following loss aversion with endogenous reference expectations under the two schemes of state-independent and state-dependent stochastic reference points. Using a tractable, intertemporal choice model, this paper derives analytic solutions to show that, when loss aversion is high, the reference-dependent decision maker saves a markedly larger amount than is predicted by the standard model. When the loss aversion is low (i.e. the individual is loss-tolerant), the overall result is ambiguous, although the decision maker may deviate into consuming more; if he faces a small level of uncertainty relative to the intensity of his loss aversion, he may even do this by borrowing. Given the same loss aversion level, this study determines that, in the presence of positive state-dependence, the state-independent model generates greater deviation than the state-dependent one. Finally, this paper derives a two-period general equilibrium result with two agents who have different attitudes toward loss.


2020 ◽  
pp. 155-185
Author(s):  
Laura Affolter

AbstractThis chapter explores how “digging deep”, which stands for the active “search for” inconsistencies in asylum seekers’ narratives in asylum interviews, becomes the morally correct thing for decision-makers to do. Building on Eckert (The Bureaucratic Production of Difference. transcript, Bielefeld, pp. 7–26, 2020) I challenge the depiction of bureaucracies as anethical and amoral. Ethics I understand not in a normative, but rather in an empirical sense, as the common good the administration is oriented towards. The chapter brings to light how particularly through fairness—both as a procedural norm and ethical value—digging deep is established as a routine, professionally necessary and desirable practice, which is connected to decision-makers’ role as “protectors of the system”. I argue that digging deep actively generates the “liars” and “false refugees” it sets out to “uncover”, thereby reinforcing the perception that, indeed, there “are” many false refugees which, again, strengthens the office’s and individual decision-makers’ endeavours to identify and exclude them from asylum.


1975 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Foster ◽  
Svenn Lindskold

Introductory psychology students, 52 men and 52 women, made estimates of the consistency of a decision-maker in 24 hypothetical social influence situations. The decision-maker was either a group or an individual, and the petitioner who was attempting to influence a change in decisions was in either a weak or equal status relationship with the decision-maker. As hypothesized, subjects predicted that group decision-makers would be less likely to change than would individual decision-makers. Subjects also predicted greater consistency on the part of the decision-maker when the petitioner was weak than when he was equal in status with the decision-maker. There were interaction effects of sex of subject and sex of characters on stability predictions.


Author(s):  
HESHAM K. ALFARES ◽  
SALIH O. DUFFUAA

In this paper, we present an empirical methodology to determine aggregate numerical criteria weights from group ordinal ranks of multiple decision criteria. Assuming that such ordinal ranks are obtained from several decision makers, aggregation procedures are proposed to combine individual rank inputs into group criteria weights. In this process, we use previous empirical results for an individual decision maker, in which a simple function provides the weight for each criterion as a function of its rank and the total number of criteria. Using a set of experiments, weight aggregation procedures are proposed and empirically compared for two cases: (i) when all the decision makers rank the same set of criteria, and (ii) when they rank different subsets of criteria. The proposed methodology can be used to determine relative weights for any set of criteria, given only criteria ranks provided by several decision makers.


Res Publica ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Marijke Breuning

Not much has been written on the foreign assistance policy of Belgium, but work that focuses on it singly or in comparison with other cases tends to charge that Belgium lacks a coherent foreign assistance policy. This study examines the rhetoric of Belgian decision makers and the policy behavior of the state, utilizing a framework of four national role conception profiles, each bringing together a set of perceptions regarding the role decision makers perceive their state to play in this issue area.Parliamentary debates for the period 1975-90 are coded for mention of themes associated with these profiles, white OECD data regarding the foreign aid expenditures for the same period provide insight into the policy behavior. It concludes that Belgian decision makers do not perceive foreign assistance as a separate issue area, but as inextricably linked with foreign (economie) policy.


Author(s):  
Adam B. Seligman ◽  
Robert P. Weller

This chapter begins by exploring the multiple forms and analytic purchases carried by memory, mimesis, and metaphor. It asks what we mean when we say that people share a culture. Rather than beginning with the assumption of the unity of culture or the priority of the individual decision maker, we focus on how people come to perceive things as shared. This is just one facet of our basic underlying question: What counts as the same? What lets two people, or two million people, feel that they have the same culture, or for that matter the same class, gender, race, religion, or any other category? This is not actually a question of how much we actually share but how and when we come to perceive that we share; not what is the same, but what counts as the same.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 10156
Author(s):  
Roberta Pellegrino ◽  
Nicola Costantino ◽  
Danilo Tauro

The purpose of this paper is to study how advanced information about customer needs obtained through an Advance Purchase Discount (APD) contract can be exploited to coordinate the capital flow and enhance the efficiency of a two-stage supply chain (SC) under decentralized control in cases of stochastic customer demand. We developed an APD model in the form of an option contract, where the model and evaluation include the flexibility for the upstream firm to decide whether to provide a discount for an advance purchase at its own discretion. Applying the model to a Fortune 100 company, a leader in the Fast Mover Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry, showed that under certain conditions, and with suitably chosen contract parameters, management of decentralized control via APD contracts can lead to system-wide efficiency, and the individual decision makers pursue their own best interests, ensuring a win-win condition.


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