We investigate risk and ambiguity attitudes among Ethiopian farmers in one of the poorest regions of the world. Strong risk aversion and ambiguity aversion were found with the Ethiopian farmers. We compared their attitudes to those of a Western university student sample elicited by the same...

We study household decision making in a high-stakes experiment with a random sample of households in rural China. Spouses have to choose between risky lotteries, first separately and then jointly. We find that spouses’ individual risk preferences are more similar the richer the household and...

A growing number of experimental studies focus on the differences between the lab and the field. One important difference between many lab and field experiments is how the endowment is obtained. By conducting a dictator game experiment, we investigate the influences of windfall and earned...

Prospect theory (PT) is the dominant descriptive theory of decision making under risk today. For the modeling of choices, PT relies on a psychologically founded separation of risk attitudes into attitudes towards outcomes, captured in a value function; and attitudes towards probabilities,...

This article examines the effect of religion on positional concerns using survey experiments. We focus on two of the dimensions of religion -- degree of religiosity and religious festivals. By conducting the experiments during both the most important day of Ramadan (the Night of Power) and a day...

Understanding the motivations behind people’s voluntary contributions to public goods is crucial for the broader issues of economic and social development. By using the experimental design of Fischbacher, Gächter, and Fehr (2001), we investigate the distribution of contribution types in two...

This paper investigates the efficiency of carrot and stick policies to reduce investment in coca cultivation in rural Colombia. To measure behavioral responses to anti-drug policies, we conducted a framed field experiment with farmers living in one of the most important coca growing areas. Our...

This paper presents the multilevel model approach to analyzing contingent valuation surveys of individuals’ willingness to pay for reductions in the level of air pollution. It is likely that individuals living in the same area are exposed to the same level of air pollution, and accordingly...

We measure risk attitudes in 30 different countries in a controlled, incentivized experiment (N = 3025). At the macroeconomic level, we find a strong and highly significant negative correlation between the risk tolerance of a country and income per capita. This gives rise to a paradox, seen that...

Attitudes towards uncertainty have been indicated to be highly context-dependent, and to be sensitive to the measurement technique employed. We present data collected in controlled experiments with 2939 subjects in 30 countries measuring uncertainty attitudes through incentivized measures as...