Economic theory is not alone in saying the answers should be identical. Logical consistency demands it. Again consider a fifty-year-old who, before he ran into me, was facing a .004 chance of dying in the next year. Suppose he gives the answers from the previous paragraph: $2,000 for scenario A and $500,000 for scenario B. The first answer implies that the increase from .004 to .005 only makes him worse off by at most $2,000, since he would be unwilling to pay more to avoid the extra risk. But, his second answer said that he would not accept the same increase in risk for less than $500,000.
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