Empirical Tests of the Refutable Implications of Expected Utility Maximization under Risk

Abstract

The curvature properties of the indirect utility function imply a set of refutable implications in the form of comparative static results and symmetric relations for the competitive firm operating under uncertainty. These hypotheses, first derived and empirically tested under output price uncertainty by Saha and Shumway (1998), are extended in this paper to the more general case of both price and quantity uncertainty and result in an important theoretical finding. Empirical tests using a panel of state-level observations fail to reject most refutable hypotheses under output price and output quantity risk, but symmetry conditions implied by a twice-continuously-differentiable indirect utility function are rejected. Two restrictive risk preference hypotheses are also rejected. At individual observations, data were consistent with most of the hypotheses implied by individual states acting as though they were expected utility-maximizing firms.

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