We study the heritability of risk, uncertainty, and time preferences using a field experiment with a large sample of adult twins. We also offer a meta-analysis of existing findings. Our field study introduces a novel empirical approach that marries behavioral genetics with structural...

A common premise in both the theoretical and policy literatures on development is that people remain poor because they are too impatient to save and too risk averse to take the sort of chances needed to accumulate wealth. The empirical literature, however, suggests that this assumption is far...

We address the question of whether media influences occupational choices. To theoretically examine media effects, we construct a dynamic Bayesian occupational choice model with sequential decisions under ambiguity due to imperfect information. We show that sufficiently intensive positive media...

A common premise in both the theoretical and policy literatures on development is that people remain poor because they are too impatient to save and too risk averse to take the sort of chances needed to accumulate wealth. The empirical literature, however, suggests that this assumption is far...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a general proposition of the relationship between altruism and risk taking. As explained in the body of the paper, we diverge from a result reported in Stark et al. (2022) and provide an expansion and a generalization of a preliminary result reported in...

Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide and a critical public health concern. We examine the hypothesis of suicide contagion within in the workplace, investigating whether exposure to a coworker's suicide increases an individual's suicide risk. Using high-quality administrative data from...

In a controlled field setting, in which the majority of people in our sample lose more than £90,000 ($120,000), we examine how human beings respond to major financial losses. University ethics boards would not allow this kind of huge-loss phenomenon to be studied with normal social-science...

This paper analyzes the stability and distribution of ambiguity attitudes using a broad population sample. Using high-powered incentives, we collected six waves of data on ambiguity attitudes about financial markets – our main application – and climate change. Estimating a structural...

In this paper, we provide an explanation for why risk taking is related to optimism. Using a laboratory experiment, we show that the degree of optimism predicts whether people tend to focus on the positive or negative outcomes of risky decisions. While optimists tend to focus on the good...

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 dataset...