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Review of Finance Vol. 18 No. 3 2014

Risk and Reward Preferences under Time Pressure

Anjali D. Nursimulu; Peter Bossaerts

1 Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and 2California Institute of Technology

open access

Abstract

Financial decision making under time pressure, though ubiquitous, is poorly understood; classical and behavioral finance are silent about the time required for a decision to be made. In an experiment, calibrating allowable decision times to 1, 3, and 5 s, we find that classical moment-based preferences reflect time-invariant sensitivity to expected reward, purchase impulsiveness under extreme time pressure, and decreased aversion to variance and increased aversion to skewness with decision time. These time-varying sensitivities translate into increased probability distortions and decreased risk aversion for gains under prospect theory (PT). Strikingly, moment-based theory provides a better fit than PT.

DOI
10.1093/rof/rft013
Volume
18
Issue
3
Pages
999-1022
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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