Abstract
Making the experimental comparison of risky and riskless two-goods choice, Chung, Glimcher, and Tymula (2019, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics) find that loss averse behaiviors are not observed under riskless choice, which is not consistent to the prediction of the prospect theory in Tversky and Kahneman (1991, Quarterly Journal of Economics). Specifically, the loss range of their task questions, which measures the degrees of loss aversion, is that the quantities of two goods both decrease, compared with the initially given endowment (See Table 1 in Chung et al. 2019). Alternatively, turning to the original paper of loss-averse preferences by Tversky and Kahneman (1991), the loss range is that the quantity of a good decreases but that of the other good increases. Furthermore, they show that the differences of the initial quantities of two goods affect the curvature of the indifference curve in the loss range (See Figure III in Tversky and Kahneman); however, Chung et al (2019) give the fixed quantities as the initial endowment.
Following the experimental design in Chung et al (2019), this study re-examines the loss averse propensity of riskless choice by differing the initial quantities of two goods as in Figure III in Tversky and Kahneman (1991) where the relationship between two goods is not substitute as in Chung et al. (2019). Moreover, this study newly observes the indifference curve of the loss range in the case of two goods that are substitute (orange juices of two companies).