Expected utility theory dominated the economic analysis of individual decision-making under risk from the early 1950s to the 1990. Among the early supporters of the expected utility hypothesis in the von Neumann–Morgenstern version were Milton Friedman and Leonard Jimmie Savage, both based at the University of Chicago, and Jacob Marschak, a leading member of the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics. Paul Samuelson of MIT was initially a severe critic of expected utility theory. Between mid-April and early May 1950, Samuelson composed three papers in which he attacked von Neumann and Morgenstern's axiomatic system. By 1952, however, Samuelson had somewhat unexpectedly become a resolute supporter of the expected utility hypothesis. Why did Samuelson change his mind? Based on the correspondence between Samuelson, Savage, Marschak, and Friedman, this article reconstructs the joint intellectual journey that led Samuelson to accept expected utility theory and Savage to revise his motivations for supporting it.

This paper reconstructs the history of experimental research on riskless choices during the period 1930-70. The experiments considered here regarded the derivation of indifference curves and the evaluation of the transitivity assumption, that is, matters that in neoclassical economics traditionally pertain to consumer demand theory. The paper examines the design of the experiments at issue, investigates their backgrounds and their reception among the economics profession, and discusses their impact on the development of neoclassical consumption theory

We study an electronic over-the-counter (OTC) market, in which each agent looks for the best counterpart through bilateral negotiations. We compare its performance with the standard electronic double-auction (DA) market, in which traders post their quotes publicly. We show that the lack of information in the OTC market induces an efficiency loss, characterized by an average closing price below the competitive price and by a traded quantity below the competitive quantity. We further test the robustness of these findings when exogenous shocks modify the competitive equilibrium. Among other things, we show that supply shocks increasing the competitive quantity improve OTC's efficiency

In 2008, the behavioral economist Richard Thaler and the legal scholar Cass Sunstein published a book in which they advocated a novel approach to public policy based on the notion of a "nudge." Roughly speaking, a nudge is an intervention in the decisional context that steers people's decisions by acting on their cognitive biases. The notion of a nudge generated an intense debate across different disciplines and proved popular with many policy makers around the world. The present article reviews the debate and research on nudges by focusing on three main dimensions: (1) the exact definition of nudges; (2) the justification of nudge policies, with a focus on "libertarian paternalism"; and (3) the effectiveness of nudges, both over time and in comparison with standard policies.