Saturday, November 08, 2014

Prospect Theory

The subjectively expected utility theory is theoretically dominant in the science of decision-making for a long time. However, Kahneman and Tversky (1979) which is really a vastly influential paper in economics after over thirty years of publication[1] shows that this theoretical prevalence is not always consistently right, particularly under the experimental settings and also introduces an elegantly alternative approach of analysis for making decisions in uncertainty, that is called prospect theory. This essay aims to critically review prospect theory from existing literature. Particularly, summaries of theory with comparisons with the subjectively expected utility theory, the evolutionary process, key contributions, highlighting applications, and challenges facing the theory in moving further in literature of making decisions under risk and uncertainty are presented.