Each semester, the UF/IFAS Food and Resource Economics Department curates a dynamic seminar series featuring leading agricultural and applied economics scholars. These seminars are designed to inform, engage, and inspire our colleagues at the University of Florida.
We are excited to announce that our first seminar of the semester will take place on Friday, February 7, 2025, at 10:30 a.m. EST and will feature Dr. David Just, professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University.
These seminars are open to all interested in attending in-person or online via Zoom.
Event Details
When: Friday, February 7th, 2025, at 10:30 a.m. EST
Where: McCarty Hall A 1151 or attend online via Zoom
Presentation Title: Lottery Selection and Probability Weighting: Testing Robustness to Extremes using the New York State Lotto
Abstract: A large number of widely replicated laboratory experiments document systematic violations of expected utility theory. This has led to the proliferation of behavioral models of decision under risk including most prominently Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory. These alternatives to expected utility theory generally introduce additional degrees of freedom, allowing the model to fit the data. This raises the question of the degree to which behavioral models may be overfitting in the laboratory setting. The models are a better fit to laboratory experimental data, but is this because they are fundamentally more consistent with behavioral motivations, or is it simply because they offer additional degrees of freedom. We test this using an out of sample prediction approach. We estimate expected utility and probability weighting based models using standard laboratory experimental data. We then use these estimates to predict behavior over choices based upon NY State Lottery games where probabilities are much smaller, and rewards can be much larger. We find expected utility estimates from the standard experiments to be far superior in their out of sample performance.
Bio: David R. Just is the Susan Eckert Lynch Professorship in Science and Business in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. He received his PhD and MSc in the field of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California Berkeley in 2001 and 1999 respectively. Professor Just uses the tools of economics and psychology to explore individual decisions in markets and their implications for wellbeing and policy. He is sole author on the award-winning Wiley textbook, Introduction to Behavioral Economics. Professor Just has published more than 150 refereed journal articles. He has previously served as director of the graduate program and director of professional degree programs in the Dyson School, and as Area Coordinator for Applied Economics and Policy in the S.C. Johnson College of Business. He recently served as co-editor for two volumes of the Handbook of Agricultural Economics. Professor Just has won many national awards for outstanding research including several for Outstanding Journal Article in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, as well as Quality of Research Discovery both in the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and the European Association of Agricultural Economists. He was named a fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association in 2020.
For more information and Zoom link, visit our website at https://fred.ifas.ufl.edu/seminar-series/ or email Dr. Jared Gars, seminar coordinator at jgars@ufl.edu
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