[jellicle]

Ugh. For a person with $1,000,000 in assets, the difference between +/- $100 in marginal utility is almost zero.

Yet all the psychological studies will show that said person HATES losing $100 much more than they like gaining $100. It's a major effect.

Heck, if you even give people the same amount of money but FRAME it as a loss versus a gain, people change their behavior. The marginal utility is identical!

Loss aversion is MUCH larger than any difference in marginal utility. It's a real thing, that has huge effects on our politics, our economics, our media and our entire lives.

TL;DR: Article writer has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

[ccleve]

Agreed; the author is wrong. But his insight is that DMU is related to loss aversion when the sums involved are large, and that really is interesting. Hadn't occurred to me. He just overstates the case.

[hyperpape]

I think you're substantially misreading. The author is saying that people describe loss aversion in ways that are not obviously distinct from DMU. He does NOT say that they're the same. What he says is that most definitions do not distinguish loss aversion and DMU.

You give an example where DMU doesn't explain the phenomenon, so we can see loss aversion. He might be happy to accept your example. But that doesn't mean that in general you don't have to point out that they're distinct, because your case is rather extreme.