John W. Pratt Explained

John Winsor Pratt (born 1931) is Emeritus William Ziegler professor business administration at Harvard University. His former education was conducted at Princeton University and Stanford University, where he specialized in mathematics and statistics.^[1] Pratt spent most of his academic career at Harvard University. He was an editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association from 1965 to 1970. His researches on risk aversion, risk sharing incentives, and the nature and discovery of stochastic laws, statistical relationships that describe the effects of decisions. He has made contributions to research in risk aversion theory, notably with Kenneth Arrow on measures of risk aversion.^{[2] [3]}

In 1962 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.^[4]

Publications

• Introduction to Statistical Decision Theory^[5]
• The Structure of Business^[6]

Articles

• The Ghosh-Pratt theorem.^[7]
• Fair (and not so fair) Division^[8]
• How Many Balance Functions Does It Take To Determine A Utility Function?^[9]
• Efficient Risk Sharing: The Last Frontier.^[10]
• A New Interpretation of the F Statistic.^[11]
• Increasing Risk: Some Direct Constructions.^[12]
• Willingness to Pay and the Distribution of Risk and Wealth.^[13]
• The Contraction Mapping Approach to the Perron-Frobenius Theory: Why Hilbert's Metric?^[14]
• Evaluating and Comparing Projects: Simple Detection of False Alarms.^[15]

Working Papers

• Some Neglected Axioms in Fair Division.^[16]
• Correlated Equilibrium and Nash Equilibrium as an Observer's Assessment of the Game.

Notes and References

1. Web site: John W. Pratt – Faculty – Harvard Business School. www.hbs.edu. 2019-04-23.
2. Pratt . J. W. . John W. Pratt . 1964 . Risk Aversion in the Small and in the Large . . 32 . 1/2 . 122–136 . . 1913738. 10.2307/1913738 .
3. Web site: John W. Pratt: William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus. 25 November 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20120512224850/http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=bio&facEmId=jpratt. 12 May 2012. dead.
4. http://www.amstat.org/awards/fellowslist.cfm View/Search Fellows of the ASA
5. Schervish. Mark J.. Pratt. John W.. Raiffa. Howard. Schlaifer. Robert. September 1996. Introduction to Statistical Decision Theory.. Journal of the American Statistical Association. 91. 435. 1376. 10.2307/2291759. 0162-1459. 2291759.
6. Book: Pratt, John W. and Richard Zeckhauser. Principals and Agents: The Structure of Business. Harvard Business School Press. 1991.
7. Pratt . John W. . 1961 . Length of Confidence Intervals . Journal of the American Statistical Association . 56 . 295 . 549–567 . 10.1080/01621459.1961.10480644 . 0162-1459.
8. Pratt. John W.. 2007-11-20. Fair (and not so fair) division. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. 35. 3. 203–236. 10.1007/s11166-007-9025-6. 154871522. 0895-5646.
9. Pratt. John W.. September 2005. How Many Balance Functions Does it Take to Determine a Utility Function?. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. 31. 2. 109–127. 10.1007/s11166-005-3551-x. 121088670. 0895-5646.
10. Pratt. John W.. December 2000. Efficient Risk Sharing: The Last Frontier. Management Science. 46. 12. 1545–1553. 10.1287/mnsc.46.12.1545.12075. 0025-1909.
11. Pratt. John W.. Schlaifer. Robert. May 1998. A New Interpretation of the F Statistic. The American Statistician. 52. 2. 141. 10.2307/2685472. 0003-1305. 2685472.
12. MACHINA . MARK. PRATT . JOHN. 1997. Increasing risk: some direct constructions. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. 14. 2. 103–127. 10.1023/a:1007719626543. 153628899. 0895-5646.
13. Pratt. John W.. Zeckhauser. Richard J.. August 1996. Willingness to Pay and the Distribution of Risk and Wealth. Journal of Political Economy. 104. 4. 747–763. 10.1086/262041. 153478355. 0022-3808.
14. Kohlberg. Elon. Pratt. John W.. May 1982. The Contraction Mapping Approach to the Perron-Frobenius Theory: Why Hilbert's Metric?. Mathematics of Operations Research. 7. 2. 198–210. 10.1287/moor.7.2.198. 0364-765X.
15. PRATT. JOHN W.. HAMMOND. JOHN S.. December 1979. Evaluating and Comparing Projects: Simple Detection of False Alarms. The Journal of Finance. 34. 5. 1231–1242. 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1979.tb00068.x. 0022-1082.
16. Pratt. John W.. 2008. Some Neglected Axioms in Fair Division. SSRN Working Paper Series. 10.2139/ssrn.1129248. 23745363. 1556-5068.