Separating the effects of beliefs and attitudes on pricing under ambiguity

  • The pricing of an ambiguous asset, whose cash flow stream is uncertain, may be affected by three factors: the belief regarding the realization likelihood of cash flows, the subjective attitude towards risk, and the attitude towards ambiguity. While previous literature looks at the total price discount under ambiguity, this paper investigates with laboratory experiments how much effect each factor can induce. We apply both non-parametric and parametric methods to cleanly separate the belief effects, the risk premiums, and the ambiguity premiums from each other. Both methods lead to similar results: Overall, subjects have substantial ambiguity aversion, and ambiguity premiums account for the largest price deviation component when the degree of ambiguity is high. As information accumulates, ambiguity premiums decrease. We also find that beliefs do influence prices under ambiguity. This is not because beliefs are biased towards either good or bad scenarios per se, but because subjects display sticky belief updating as new information becomes available. The clear separation performed in this paper between belief and attitude also enables a more accurate estimation of the parameter of ambiguity aversion compared to previous studies, since the effect of beliefs is partialled out. Overall, we find empirically that both factors, belief and attitude towards ambiguity, are important factors in pricing under ambiguity.

Download full text files

Export metadata

Metadaten
Author:Wenhui Li, Christian Wilde
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-582746
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3801713
Parent Title (English):SAFE working paper ; No. 311
Series (Serial Number):SAFE working paper (311)
Publisher:SAFE
Place of publication:Frankfurt am Main
Document Type:Working Paper
Language:English
Year of Completion:2021
Year of first Publication:2021
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2021/07/30
Tag:ambiguity; ambiguity premium; belief effect; belief estimation; laboratory experiments
Issue:February 28, 2021
Page Number:48
HeBIS-PPN:485411059
Institutes:Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / House of Finance (HoF)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE)
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht