Truman F. Bewley Publications

This paper contains a review of work on wage rigidity. The work includes field studies, and economic experiments, and psychological surveys. Economists have done the field studies and experiments, and management scientists and experimental psychologists have done the surveys.

Keywords: Wage rigidity, Morale, Fairness, Reciprocity

JEL Classification: J30

Over 300 business people, labor leaders, business consultants, and counselors of unemployed people were interviewed during the recession of the early 1990’s in order to learn why wages and salaries were declining in only a few firms. Employers believed that cutting pay would hurt employee morale, leading to lower productivity and current or future difficulties with hiring and retention. There were few indications that unemployed people had excessive wage expectations. On the contrary, many unemployed were too flexible and found themselves rejected by firms as overqualified.

Stimulated by Frank Knight’s work, “Risk, Uncertainty and Profit,” I present a theory of innovation based on what I term Knightian decision theory. This theory includes a concept of uncertainty aversion, a behavioral property that makes people reluctant to undertake new unevaluatable risks. This aversion is compounded when individuals are obliged to cooperate in undertaking risks. The theory leads directly to the conclusion that innovation in business is the natural domain of individual investors with unusually low levels of uncertainty aversion. Also, it should be difficult to innovate new markets for insurance of unevaluatable risks, for the success of a new market requires that many people overcome their aversion to uncertainty and enter the market.

JEL Classification: 022, 026, 511, 514

Keywords: Decision theory, uncertainty, innovation

In this paper I attempt to reconcile the apparent definiteness of econometric practice with the vagueness of subjective probabilities assumed in Knightian decision theory. I argue that some standard uses of classical inference are Knightian in spirit, even though the formal justification of classical methods uses the frequentist notion of probability. Classical confidence regions may be viewed as defining sets of posterior means corresponding to a standardized set of prior distributions. Tests of the null hypothesis that a parameter equals a particular value may be viewed as determining whether it is rational, from a Knightian point of view, to act as if the null hypothesis were true. This interpretation of the tests seems to correspond fairly well to practice and to the informal story told by classical statisticians. Hence, one could argue that to this extent classical statisticians act unconsciously as Knightian decision makers. If one accepts this argument, then it is of interest to know what level of uncertainty aversion corresponds to the popular 5% significance level.

JEL Classification: 211, 511

Keywords: Decision, Theory, Classical statistics, Probability intervals, Subjective probability, Bayesian

The theory of choice proposed in “Knightian Decision Theory, Part I” is here applied to intertemporal problems. An analogue of dynamic programming called maxmin programming is developed. Also, it is shown that detailed contingent planning may not be needed in order to achieve maximality, a program being maximal if no other program is preferred to it. In certain circumstances, a maximal program can be achieved by making a finite calculation in each period. This calculation ignores distant future states and could also ignore unlikely contingencies. A decision maker making such calculations would behave much like a satisficer.

JEL Classification: 022, 511, 213

Keywords: Satisficing, Decision theory, Dynamic programming, Maxmin programming

A theory of choice under uncertainty is proposed which removes the completeness assumption from the Anscombe-Aumann formulation of Savage’s theory and introduces an inertia assumption. The inertia assumption is that there is such a thing as the status quo and an alternative is accepted only if it is preferred to the status quo. This theory is one way of giving rigorous expression to Frank Knight’s distinction between risk and uncertainty.

JEL Classification: 026, 022, 511

Keywords: Decision theory, Knight, Theory of choice, Uncertainty, Inertia assumption