Combining the methodologies of experiment economics and molecular genetics, we report genetic association between sex-hormone genes and ultimatum game (UG) behavior in a discovery sample from China and a replication sample from Israeli. We find that the estrogen receptor β gene (ESRβ) is...

It is increasingly recognized that decision making under uncertainty does not depend only on probabilities, but also on psychological factors. People display ambiguity aversion in preferring to bet on events with known probabilities rather than those for which probabilities are not known. People...

Keynes (1921) and Ellsberg (1961) have articulated an aversion toward betting on an urn containing balls of two colors of unknown proportion to one with a 50-50 composition. Keynes views this as reflecting different preferences for bets arising from different sources of uncertainty. Ellsberg...

We study the role of risk aversion underlying son preference in patriarchal societies, where sons serve as better insurance for old-age support than daughters. The implications of an insurance motive on son preference are two-fold. First, prior to the birth of their children, more risk-averse...

This paper investigates attitude towards partial ambiguity. In a laboratory setting, we study three symmetric variants of the ambiguous urn in Ellsberg's 2-urn paradox by varying the possible compositions of red and black cards in a 100-card deck. Subjects value betting on a deck with a smaller...

We extend Ellsberg's two-urn paradox and propose three symmetric forms of partial ambiguity by limiting the possible compositions in a deck of 100 red and black cards in three ways. Interval ambiguity involves a symmetric range of 50-n to 50 n red cards. Complementarily, disjoint ambiguity...

We use a large laboratory experimental data involving 2,118 Chinese subjects from Singapore and 1,260 Chinese subjects from Beijing and 400 Jewish subjects from Israel to investigate gender and country difference in altruistic giving using the Andreoni-Miller dictator game (AMDG). Our results...

This note studies the allocation of heterogeneous commodities to agents whose private values for combinations of these commodities are monotonic by inclusion. This setting can accommodate the presence of complementarity and substitutability among the heterogeneous commodities. By using induction...

The empirical literature points to a stylized phenomenon of increased demand for hope following adversity. Clotfelter and Cook (1989) suggest that hope is a key sentiment underpinning recreational gambling. Chew and Ho (1994) offer the view of hope being experienced in lottery products when...

People often forget and sometimes fantasize. This paper reports a large-scale experiment on memory errors and their relation to preferential traits including time preference, attitudes toward risk and ambiguity, and psychological characteristics such as anticipatory feelings. We observe...