Lattices and Lotteries in Apportioning Risk

Although risk aversion has been used in economic models for over 275 years, the past few decades have shown how higher order risk attitudes are also quite important. A behavioural approach to defining such risk attitudes was developed by Eeckhoudt and Schlesinger, based on simple lottery preference. This article shows how the mathematics of lattice theory can be used to model these lottery preferences. In addition to modelling a simple lattice structure, I show how such lattices can be extended in order to develop a better understanding of higher order risk attitudes.