A Theory of Insurance and Gambling - Replacing Risk Preferences with Quid pro Quo

A Theory of Insurance and Gambling: Replacing Risk Preferences with Quid pro Quo



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English | February 1st, 2024 | ISBN: 019768792X | 273 pages | True PDF | 12.59 MB

In 1948, Milton Friedman and L. J. Savage suggested that risk preferences explain the demand for insurance and gambling—a theory that is still almost universally accepted by economists today. If you were to ask almost any economist why people purchase insurance, they would say it is because most people are "risk averse," or equivalently, "prefer certainty of losses." If asked to explain why people gamble, they would say it is because some people are "risk seekers."

In A Theory of Insurance and Gambling, John A. Nyman critiques this approach and proposes a new theory of the motivations for insurance and gambling. He argues that demand for insurance and gambling is best understood by focusing not on risk preferences, but on the income transfer, the states of the world that trigger the income transfer, and the value of the income in those states. In other words, insurance is motivated by a preference to transfer income to future states of the world where income is more valuable. Gambling, on the other hand, is motivated by a preference to transfer income to future states of the world where additional income is less costly to obtain.