We analyze individual investment behavior among 822 young men and women that are members of 111 formal business groups in northern Ethiopia. We collected baseline data and investment data one year later combined with incentivized field experiments to obtain dis-aggregated risk preference data....

Influential economic approaches as random utility models assume a monotonic relation between choice frequencies and "strength of preference," in line with widespread evidence from the cognitive sciences, which also document an inverse relation to response times. However, for economic decisions...

The encouragement of potential investors who are emotionally broken by past losses and market experiences is crucial to the sustainable flow of funds to the stock market. This can be established by building a knowledge-creating mechanism among investors in their cognitive dimensions, which, in...

We use a field experiment and a within-subject design based on multiple Choice Lists (CLs) that integrate time and risk. Diminishing impatience with extended time horizons is studied by varying time horizons from one week to two years. Time-dated risky prospects are constant within CLs and are...

Many experimental studies and surveys have shown that women consistently display more risk-averse behavior than men when confronted with decisions involving risk. These differences in risk preferences, when combined with gender differences in other behavioral traits, such as fondness for...

We apply the basic lessons and insights learned in the elicitation and estimation of risk and time preferences literature to the literature on social preferences. Following Andersen et al. (2008), we design a laboratory experiment to jointly elicit risk preferences and preferences for altruism....

We consider the problem where a modeller conducts sensitivity analysis of a model consisting of random input factors, a corresponding random output of interest, and a baseline probability measure. The modeller seeks to understand how the model (the distribution of the input factors as well as...

In an experiment that elicits subjects' willingness to pay (WTP) for the outcome of a lottery, we confirm the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes described by Kahneman and Tversky. In addition, we document a systematic effect of stake sizes on the magnitude and sign of the relative risk premium,...

We investigate what statistical properties drive risk-taking in a large set of observational panel data on online poker games (n=4,450,585). Each observation refers to a choice between a safe "insurance" option and a binary lottery of winning or losing the game. Our setting offers a real-world...

We measure individual-level loss aversion using three incentivized, representative surveys of the U.S. population (combined N = 3,000). We find that around 50% of the U.S. population is loss tolerant, with many participants accepting negative-expected-value gambles. This is counter to earlier...

Among the reasons behind the choice behavior of an individual taking a stochastic form are her potential indifference or indecisiveness between certain alternatives, and/or her willingness to experiment in the sense of occasionally deviating from choosing a best alternative in order to give a...

We propose a novel approximation of the risky steady state and construct first-order perturbations around it for a general class of dynamic equilibrium models with time-varying and non-Gaussian risk. We offer analytical formulas and conditions for their local existence and uniqueness. We apply...

Models of generalized recursive utility are becoming increasingly common as alternatives to discounted expected utility theory. These models have successfully explained many so-called, “anomalies” in field data, but often imply that agents have a preference over the timing of uncertainty...

Eliciting risk preferences usually involves tasks that subjects may find complex, such as calculations of expected values and assessment of probabilities in multiple price lists (MPL). There is a serious concern that the decisions of the subjects may be driven by miscalculations or...

I investigate how a CEO's prior performance affects her managerial decision making. Controlling for CEO fixed effects and employing reference points, I find that CEOs choose less risky projects after making gains. This result suggests that following good performance, a CEO feels relaxed and...

The year 2020 will be remembered in history as a realization of systemic risks resulting from human behavior. Risks and opportunity have always emerged from the decisions and behaviors of humans yet for thousands of years the transformation of nature to provide a hospitable environment to live,...

This paper aims to analyse the influence of overconfidence bias and herding bias on investment decision making and the moderating role of financial literacy and risk attitudes on overconfidence bias and herding bias on investment decision making in the Colombo Stock Market. Data was collected...

The risk conscious investor is defined as the maximizer of a conservative valuation or dynamically a nonlinear expectation. Both the static and dynamic problems are addressed using distortions of tail probabilities or distortions of tail measures. The multivariate static problem is solved in the...

We study how investors' preferences for robustness influence corporate investment, financing, and compensation decisions and valuation in a financial contracting model with agency. We characterize the robust contract and show that early liquidation can be optimal when investors are sufficiently...

In this paper, we provide two novel representation theorems for the expected utility model by suitably adjusting independence and continuity. Our representation results suggest that an analyst can refute choice by expected utility whenever violations of weak forms of independence are observed,...

We document a robust dynamic inconsistency in risky choice. Using a unique brokerage dataset and two preregistered experiments, we compare people's initial risk-taking plans to their subsequent decisions. In both settings, people accept risk as part of a "loss-exit" strategy-planning to continue...

Previous work has shown that preferences are not always stable across time, but surprisingly little is known about the reasons for this instability. I examine whether variation in people's emotions over time predicts changes in risk attitudes. Using a large panel data set, I identify happiness,...

Our understanding of risk preferences can be sharpened by considering their evolutionary basis. The existing literature has focused on two sources of risk: idiosyncratic risk and aggregate risk. We introduce a new source of risk, heritable risk, in which there is a positive correlation between...

Economists have become increasingly interested in using attention to explain behavioral patterns both on the micro and macro level. This has resulted in several disparate theoretical approaches. Some, like rational inattention, assume a "top-down" model of executive optimization. Others, like...

Abstracting from self-protection and self-insurance e ects of export produc-tion choices, exporting rms usually have access to a number of risk sharingmarkets that have an efficient risk management role. Two of the most strikingresults achieved from the existence of risk sharing markets are the...

We document a robust dynamic inconsistency in risky choice. Using a unique brokerage dataset and two preregistered experiments, we compare people's initial risk-taking plans to their subsequent decisions. In both settings, people accept risk as part of a "loss-exit" strategy-planning to continue...