This paper studies the relationship between income inequality and risk taking. Increased income inequality is likely to enlarge the scope for upward comparisons and, in the presence of reference-dependent preferences, to increase willingness to take risks. Using a globally representative data...

As climate variability is increasing, extreme events such as temperature fluctuations are expected to become more frequent. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are especially vulnerable to heat-related variability and its ensuing impacts on mortality. Therefore, there is an urgent need to...

We assess whether the COVID-19 vaccine induces COVID-19 risky behavior (e.g., going to bars and restaurants) and thus reduces vaccine efficacy. A key empirical challenge is the endogeneity bias when comparing risk-taking by vaccination status since people choose whether to get vaccinated. To...

The formation of economic preferences in childhood and adolescence has long-term consequences for life outcomes. We study in an experiment how both birth order and siblings’ gender composition are related to risk, time, and social preferences. We find that second-born children are typically...

Does exposure to cognitive load affect key properties of economic behavior? In this experiment, subjects face a series of simple binary decision tasks between prospects, testing for monotonicity in monetary payments, consistency with (first-order) stochastic dominance, reduction of compound...