Anomalies: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias
Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch and Richard Thaler open with an economist who bought Bordeaux wines at low prices that have since risen sharply in value; he drinks some of them but would neither sell at the auction price nor buy another bottle at it. They name the pattern in which people demand much more to give up an object than they would pay to acquire it the endowment effect, after Thaler, and the preference for the current state the status quo bias, after Samuelson and Zeckhauser. Both are described as manifestations of an asymmetry of value that Kahneman and Tversky called loss aversion, and the column documents the evidence for them and discusses how they relate.
Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch and Richard Thaler open with an economist who bought Bordeaux wines at low prices that have since risen sharply in value; he drinks some of them but would neither sell at the auction price nor buy another bottle at it. They name the pattern in which people demand much more to give up an object than they would pay to acquire it the endowment effect, after Thaler, and the preference for the current state the status quo bias, after Samuelson and Zeckhauser. Both are described as manifestations of an asymmetry of value that Kahneman and Tversky called loss aversion, and the column documents the evidence for them and discusses how they relate.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-10-28.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1991). Anomalies: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5(1), 193-206. doi:10.1257/jep.5.1.193 https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.5.1.193