We analyse how age and cognitive skills are related to risk tolerance among respondents to the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth between 1993 and 2006. Older individuals display lower risk tolerance than younger individuals, though as the panel ages from their early thirties to their...

Estimating risk preferences is tricky because controlling for confounding factors is difficult. Omitting or imperfectly controlling for these factors can attribute too much observable behavior to risk aversion and bias estimated preferences. Agents often modify risky decisions in response to...