McQuown and Vasicek left Wells separately in the mid-1970s but teamed up in 1983 to apply options-pricing theory to live debt markets.

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In theory ministers now have three options.

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Our theory: Cypress has too darn many options floating around.

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But some seriously logical economic theory and empirical evidence suggest that this set of options is much too bleak.

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But prospect theory, a field of behavioral economics, tells us that people who have no good options tend to be risk-seeking, because the psychological cost of a bad outcome diminishes the fear of a worse outcome.

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