WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT DECISION MAKING UNDER RISK AND WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

This article reviews two major approached used in the past for risk analysis - the expected utility approach and the use of safety rules and endeavors to reconcile their applicability and use in light of the recent nonexpected utility risk literature and working using the mean-Gini coefficient for risk analysis. This leads to the identification of several "reduced form" hypotheses that hold under a variety of theoretical structures and to a discussion of some empirical evidence regarding these hypotheses. The major lesson of recent research of individual behavior under risk is that it is not always consistent with the expected utility approach; in short, there is no generic model for evaluating behavior under risk.