tailieunhanh - Tài liệu trung cấp môn Kinh tế vi mô bằng tiếng Anh - Phần 13

Tài liệu tham khảo Tài liệu trung cấp môn Kinh tế vi mô bằng tiếng Anh gồm 41 phần giúp sinh viên khoa kinh tế học tốt môn Kinh tế vi mô. Tài liệu này là phần 13 giới thiệu về " Uncertainty " | CHAPTER 1 2 UNCERTAINTY Uncertainty is a fact of life. People face risks every time they take a shower walk across the street or make an investment. But there are financial institutions such as insurance markets and the stock market that can mitigate at least some of these risks. We will study the functioning of these markets in the next chapter but first we must study individual behavior with respect to choices involving uncertainty. Contingent Consumption Since we now know all about the standard theory of consumer choice let s try to use what we know to understand choice under uncertainty. The first question to ask is what is the basic thing that is being chosen The consumer is presumably concerned with the probability distribution of getting different consumption bundles of goods. A probability distribution consists of a list of different outcomes in this case consumption bundles and the probability associated with each outcome. When a consumer decides how much automobile insurance to buy or how much to 216 UNCERTAINTY Ch. 12 invest in the stock market he is in effect deciding on a pattern of probability distribution across different amounts of consumption. For example suppose that you have 100 now and that you are contemplating buying lottery ticket number 13. If number 13 is drawn in the lottery the holder will be paid 200. This ticket costs say 5. The two outcomes that are of interest are the event that the ticket is drawn and the event that it isn t. Your original endowment of wealth the amount that you would have if you did not purchase the lottery ticket is 100 if 13 is drawn and 100 if it isn t drawn. But if you buy the lottery ticket for 5 you will have a wealth distribution consisting of 295 if the ticket is a winner and 95 if it is not a winner. The original endowment of probabilities of wealth in different circumstances has been changed by the purchase of the lottery ticket. Let us examine this point in more detail. In this discussion we ll .