Forecasting risk attitudes: An experimental study using actual and forecast gamble choices

We develop and evaluate a simple gamble-choice task to measure attitudes toward risk, and apply this measure to examine differences in risk attitudes of male and female university students. In addition, we examine stereotyping by asking whether a person's sex is read as a signal of risk preference. Subjects choose which of five 50/50 gambles they wish to play. The gambles include one sure thing; the remaining four increase (linearly) in expected payoff and risk. Each subject also is asked to guess which of the five gambles each of the other subjects chose, and is paid for correct guesses. The experiment is conducted under three different frames: an abstract frame where the two highest-payoff gambles carry the possibility of losses, an abstract frame with no losses, and an investment frame that mirrors the payoff structure of the former. We find that women are significantly more risk averse than men in all three settings, and predictions of both women and men tend to confirm this difference. While average guesses reflect the average difference in choices, only 27 percent of guesses are accurate, which is slightly higher than chance.     

Ambiguity aversion among student subjects: the role of probability interval and emotional parameters

In the literature on decision-making under uncertainty, it has been shown that decision-makers tend to prefer taking gambles with known-risk probabilities (pure risk) over equivalent gambles with ambiguous probabilities. This article contributes to the ongoing discussion in the literature on cognitive and non-cognitive covariates of ambiguity aversion. Through a series of experiments, it finds that subjects are more ambiguity-averse to prospects with wide probability intervals than to an equivalent prospect with narrow intervals, and that subjects’ inherent trust, happiness and level of optimism affect the level of ambiguity aversion.     

Why did he do that? Using counterfactuals to study the effect of intentions in extensive form games

We investigate the role of intentions in two-player two-stage games. For this purpose we systematically vary the set of opportunity sets the first mover can choose from and study how the second mover reacts not only to opportunities of gains but also of losses created by the choice of the first mover. We find that the possibility of gains for the second mover (generosity) and the risk of losses for the first mover (vulnerability) are important drivers for second mover behavior. On the other hand, efficiency concerns and an aversion against violating trust seem to be far less important motivations. We also find that second movers compare the actual choice of the first mover and the alternative choices that would have been available to him to allocations that involve equal material payoffs.     

The effect of acute pain on risky and intertemporal choice

Pain is a highly salient and attention-demanding experience that motivates people to act. We investigated the effect of pain on decision making by delivering acute thermal pain to participants’ forearm while they made risky and intertemporal choices involving money. Participants (n = 107) were more risk seeking under pain than in a no-pain control condition when decisions involved gains but not when they involved equivalent losses. Pain also resulted in greater preference for immediate (smaller) over future (larger) monetary rewards. We interpret these results as a motivation to offset the aversive, pain-induced state, where monetary rewards become more appealing under pain than under no pain and when delivered sooner rather than later. Our findings add to the long-standing debate regarding the role of intuition and reflection in decision making.     

Attitudes to risk and attitudes to uncertainty: experimental evidence

In a series of experiments the interactions among individual attitudes towards risk and uncertainty, the sign of the outcome domain, and the way uncertainty is represented are tested. This is done in a unified framework, eliciting individual values by means of a second price auction. Results confirm the presence of the well-known fourfold pattern of risk attitude (risk aversion for gains and risk seeking for losses at high probability, and risk seeking for gains and risk aversion for losses at low probability) and show that this pattern can also be extended to uncertainty. In the valuation of losses the modal pattern is decreasing risk and uncertainty aversion as the probability of loss increases, while increasing risk and uncertainty aversion is observed for gains. Moreover, it is found that the size of reaction to uncertainty does not depend on the outcome domain, and that it persists in the face of an incentive-compatible mechanism to elicit preferences.     

Is it my money or not? An experiment on risk aversion and the house-money effect

The house-money effect, understood as people’s tendency to be more daring with easily-gotten money, is a behavioral pattern that poses questions about the external validity of experiments in economics: to what extent do people behave in experiments like they would have in a real-life situation, given that they play with easily-gotten house money? We ran an economic experiment with 122 students to measure the house-money effect on their risk preferences. They received an amount of money with which they made risky decisions involving losses and gains; a randomly selected treatment group received the money 21 days in advance and a control group got it the day of the experiment. From a simple calculation we found that participants in the treatment group only spent on average approximately 35 % of their cash in advance. The data confirms the well documented results that men are more tolerant to risk than women, and that individuals in general are more risk tolerant towards losses than towards gains. With our preferred specification, we find a mean CRRA risk aversion coefficient of 0.34, with a standard deviation of 0.09. Furthermore, if subjects in the treatment group spent 35 % of the endowment their CRRA risk aversion coefficient is higher than that of the control group by approximately 0.3 standard deviations. We interpret this result as evidence of a small and indirect house money effect operating though the amount of the cash in advance that was actually spent. We conclude that the house money effect may play a small role in decisions under uncertainty, especially when involving losses. Our novel design, however, could be used for other domains of decision making both in the lab and for calibration of economic models used in micro and macroeconomics.     

Patience and time consistency in collective decisions

We present experimental evidence regarding individual and group decisions over time. Static and longitudinal methods are combined to test four conditions on time preferences: impatience, stationarity, age independence, and dynamic consistency. Decision making in groups should favor coordination via communication about voting intentions. We find that individuals are neither patient nor consistent, that groups are both patient and highly consistent, and that information exchange between participants helps groups converge to stable decisions. Finally we provide additional evidence showing that our results are driven by the specific role of groups and not by either repeated choices or individual preferences when choosing for other subjects.     

A theory of subjective compound lotteries

We develop a Savage-type model of choice under uncertainty in which agents identify uncertain prospects with subjective compound lotteries. Our theory permits issue preference; that is, agents may not be indifferent among gambles that yield the same probability distribution if they depend on different issues. Hence, we establish subjective foundations for the Anscombe-Aumann framework and other models with two different types of probabilities. We define second-order risk as risk that resolves in the first stage of the compound lottery and show that uncertainty aversion implies aversion to second-order risk which implies issue preference and behavior consistent with the Ellsberg paradox.     

Optimistic irrationality and overbidding in private value auctions

Bidding one’s value in a second-price, private-value auction is a weakly dominant solution (Vickrey in J Finance 16(1):8–37, 1961), but repeated experimental studies find more overbidding than underbidding. We propose a model of optimistically irrational bidders who understand that there are possible gains and losses associated with higher bids but who may overestimate the additional probability of winning and/or underestimate the potential losses when bidding above value. These bidders may fail to discover the dominant strategy—despite the fact that the dominant strategy only requires rationality from bidders—but respond in a common sense way to out-of-equilibrium outcomes. By varying the monetary consequences of losing money in experimental auctions we observe more overbidding when the cost to losing money is low, and less overbidding when the cost is high. Our findings lend themselves to models in which less than fully rational bidders respond systematically to out-of-equilibrium incentives, and we find that our model better fits the effects of our manipulations than most of the existing models we consider.     

The adequacy of investment choices offered by 401(k) plans

The choices made by 401(k) participants are the product of two different decisions: what is offered and what is chosen. While there have been a number of studies of the decisions made by participants in 401(k) plans, there have been no studies of the adequacy of the full set of choices offered to 401(k) participants. This paper analyzes the adequacy and characteristics of the choices offered to 401(k)-plan participants for over 400 plans. We find that only 53% of the plans offer an adequate set of options and that over a 20-year period offering inadequate options makes a difference in terminal wealth of over 53%. We find that funds included in the plans are riskier, but have a slightly higher return, than the general population of funds in the same categories. However, we find that the return difference is roughly equal to the difference in expenses between funds selected by plans and randomly selected funds. We study the characteristics of plans that are associated with adequate investment choices, including an analysis of the use of company stock, plan size, and the use of sophisticated strategies.     

The effect of risk-taking behavior on profitability: Evidence from futures market

We explore how futures traders make a tradeoff between risk and return by examining their risk-taking in the action. By applying a novel measure to their trade-by-trade transactions to capture their tendency in risk-taking, we find a general tendency to reduce risk-taking by cutting positions when facing losses or gains, and the tendency is stronger in the case of losses. However, great variations exist among traders in the risk-taking tendency and the results for trading are opposite for profitable and unprofitable traders. For the unprofitable, more risk-taking by trading more actively leads to greater losses. This is concrete evidence for the prevailing belief in the literature that trading too much, arguably due to overconfidence, is hazardous to investor's wealth. Contrary to that belief, however, we find fresh evidence that more active trading by the profitable traders leads to greater profits, suggesting their trades are likely based on ability and skills.     

A CONTINGENT VALUATION STUDY OF UNCERTAIN ENVIRONMENTAL GAINS

Acid deposition in a present and future cause of biodiversity losses in vulnerable upland areas of Scotland important for nature conservation. However, the exact nature of damages under the status quo, and both the timing and extent of recovery of upland ecosystems if deposition is reduced, are subject to uncertainty. this uncertainty complicates damages cost estimation. In this paper, we have explored the use of CVM to measure the willingness to pay (WTP) of the Scottish population for uncertain recovery/damage scenarios from reduced acid rain deposition. An optimally-designed referendum format was used utilising the distribution of open-ended bids from a pilot study to determine bid amounts and sampling size for each bid amount. Eight explanatory variables, including future damage level were selected in a non-linear step-wise regression analysis. Average household WTP for abatement of acid rain was £247 and £351 per year when faced with low and high future damage levels respectively. Recovery level and recovery time did not significantly influence WTP. When faced with risky outcomes regarding future damage and recovery level, respondent were found to be risk averse to both environmental gains and losses.     

Marginal risk aversion and preferences in a betting market

An individual's behavioural attitudes toward variance and non-symmetry in the payoff distributions of pari-mutuel gambles are empirically examined using the von Neumann - Morgenstern expected utility of wealth paradigm. Preferences over payoff distributions for a representative bettor are estimated from observed payoffs at a greyhound racetrack. The results indicate that the representative bettor exhibits increasing absolute risk aversion and, given that the representative bettor is locally non-satiated with regard to wealth, exhibits preference for variance and aversion to positive skewness in the payoff distributions of the gambles examined.     

GAMBLING WITH TAX DOLLARS

Municipalities often spend money in the hopes of generating new tax revenue. Because the estimated increase in tax revenues is uncertain, these policies are essentially gambles with tax dollars. This paper shows that it is possible for a welfare-maximizing government to exhibit risk-loving behavior even though individual taxpayers are risk-averse. This risk-loving behavior may occur when the government has the option to provide an indivisible public good, such as a park. Interestingly, the poorest and wealthiest municipalities do not find gambles optimal. For communities that find gambles optimal, both the provision of the public good and tax rates are affected.     

Asset Allocation and Information Overload: The Influence of Information Display,Asset Choice,and Investor Experience

This paper examines whether information overload might partially explain why defined contribution plan participants tend to follow the "path of least resistance" (Choi et al. [2002]) In two experiments, we test how three common differences among defined contribution plans (the number of investment choices offered, the similarity of the choices, and the display of the choices) lead to varying degrees of information overload and the probability of opting for the default. Notably, we control for the financial aptitude of each individual. The findings suggest that the success of certain plan features depends strongly on the financial background of the participant. We find that low-knowledge individuals opt for the default allocation more often than high-knowledge individuals (experiment 1: 20% versus 2%). The results emphasize the importance of plan design, especially the selection of plan defaults, and the need to improve the financial literacy of participants.     

Preferences for redistribution in the land of opportunities

This paper explores how individual preferences for redistribution depend on future income prospects. In addition to estimating the impact of individuals' socioeconomic background and of their subjective perceptions of future mobility, we employ panel data to construct ‘objective’ measures of expected gains and losses from redistribution for different categories of individuals. We find that such measures have considerable explanatory power and perform better than ‘general mobility’ indexes. We also find that preferences for redistribution respond to individual beliefs on what determines one's position in the social ladder. Ceteris paribus, people who believe that the American society offers 'equal opportunities are more averse to redistribution.     

Should Sales Taxes Be Imposed on E‐Commerce?

We study the impact of E‐commerce across state lines in the United States on tax revenue, public good provision, and real income. In particular, in light of the unenforceable nature of interstate taxation, we evaluate the potential gains from coordinating sales and income state taxes among sovereign jurisdictions. We find that the revenue at risk is small and that the welfare gains or losses of any countervailing policy measures, in particular those associated with the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, are even smaller.     

Individual valuation,market valuation,and the preference reversal phenomenon

This article reports experiments dealing with individual subject valuation and preference over prospect pairs that are known to generate systematic intransitivities in choice behavior termed “preference reversals”. The authors examine whether alternative procedures to those previously employed for eliciting individual limit selling prices over prospects alters the incidence or dollar magnitude of preference reversals. It is found that when individual limit selling prices over prospects are elicited in a repetitive, second-price sealed Vickrey (1961) auction market framework, rather than under the traditional single response Becker, DeGroot, and Marshak (1964) procedure, that the dollar magnitude of preference reversals declines significantly. Initially, when opening Vickrey auction limit selling prices are combined with individual subject choices over prospects, previous results like those of Grether and Plott (1979) are obtained. When ending Vickrey auction limit selling prices are combined with individual subject choices over prospects, the dollar magnitude of reversals declines significantly. These results imply that markets can be efficient and yield market clearing prices under a given arrangement of property rights even if the behavior of some individuals is inconsistent with expected utility theory.     

The sustainability of economic transformation

The paper analyzes the feasibility of sustaining both macroeconomic stability and political support during economic transformation. Macroeconomic stability requires that state sector losses plus public infrastructure investment be financed by tax revenue plus any external assistance. Political sustainability depends on the income gains and losses experienced by three groups—state sector workers, private sector workers, and private savers/investors. The aggregate income gains from allowing heterogeneous workers to make occupational choices consistent with their comparative advantages can outweigh or significantly offset the short-run economic efficiency costs of maintaining political support for the transformation. Successful transformation may depend on external assistance, but this need will diminish over time.     

OPTIMAL FISCAL POLICY IN THE DESIGN OF SOCIAL SECURITY REFORMS*

The quantitative literature has documented that a privatization of the social security system generates large long‐run welfare gains at the cost of welfare losses for transition generations. In this article, we maximize over the entire policy space, following the optimal fiscal policy approach. The resulting allocation, by construction, lies on the constrained Pareto frontier. We find that the optimal design of reforms exhibits sizeable welfare gains arising from a reduction in labor supply distortions. In contrast, the welfare gains coming from the reduction of savings distortions are relatively small.