arXiv subjects

Marilyn Pease

Publications and source records attributed to Marilyn Pease.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

How to Make an Action Attractive

A policymaker often wants to steer a decision-maker toward one of two actions, but lacks reliable knowledge of how the decision-maker perceives uncertainty or evaluates risk. We formalize a notion of robust paternalism: a modification a' of a desired action a is robustly more attractive than a relative to b if, for every belief over states and every increasing concave utility function, whenever the decision-maker prefers a to b, she also prefers a' to b. We characterize all such modifications directly in terms of state-dependent payoffs and discuss applications to political competition, bilateral trade, insurance, and information acquisition.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2026

On Risk Aversion in Auctions

We provide a unifying way to analyze how risk aversion changes bidding in auctions by asking which bids become more attractive as bidders become more risk averse. In first-price auctions, under two payoff conditions--winning is never worse than the outside option, and winning with a low bid is preferable to winning only with a high bid--greater risk aversion makes high bids more appealing. In second-price auctions with a known outside option, bidding more increases risk exposure conditional on winning, so greater risk aversion favors lower bids. We show these bid-level forces translate into corresponding equilibrium comparative statics.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2026

Playing it Safe: Actions Attractive to the Risk Averse

We introduce a way to compare actions in decision problems. One action is safer than another if the set of beliefs at which the decision-maker prefers the safer action expands as the decision-maker becomes more risk averse. We provide a full characterization of this relation, show that it is equivalent to robust conceptions of single-crossing and second-order stochastic dominance, and reveal that in monotone decision problems it totally orders the decision-maker's set of actions. We discuss applications to games, insurance, investment hedging, and security design.

econ.TH↗