Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

An Economic Index of Riskiness

Contents:

Author Info

  • Robert J. Aumann
  • Roberto Serrano

Abstract

Define the riskiness of a gamble as the reciprocal of the absolute risk aversion (ARA) of an individual with constant ARA who is indifferent between taking and not taking that gamble. We characterize this index by axioms, chief among them a "duality" axiom that, roughly speaking, asserts that less risk-averse individuals accept riskier gambles. The index is positively homogeneous, continuous, and subadditive; respects first- and second-order stochastic dominance; and for normally distributed gambles is half of variance/mean. Examples are calculated, additional properties are derived, and the index is compared with others. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/591947
File Function: link to full text
Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Bibliographic Info

Article provided by University of Chicago Press in its journal Journal of Political Economy.

Volume (Year): 116 (2008)
Issue (Month): 5 (October)
Pages: 810-836

as in new window
Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:116:y:2008:i:5:p:810-836

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE/

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Diamond, Peter A. & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1974. "Increases in risk and in risk aversion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 337-360, July.
  2. Hanoch, G & Levy, Haim, 1969. "The Efficiency Analysis of Choices Involving Risk," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(107), pages 335-46, July.
  3. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta & Roberto Serrano & Oscar Volij, 2003. "Rejecting Small Gambles Under Expected Utility," Economics Working Papers 0032, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
  4. Philippe Artzner & Freddy Delbaen & Jean-Marc Eber & David Heath, 1999. "Coherent Measures of Risk," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 203-228.
  5. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1970. "Increasing risk: I. A definition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 225-243, September.
  6. Matthew Rabin, 2000. "Risk Aversion and Expected-Utility Theory: A Calibration Theorem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1281-1292, September.
  7. Tobin, James, 1969. "Comment on Borch and Feldstein," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(105), pages 13-14, January.
  8. Levy, Haim & Hanoch, Giora, 1970. "Relative Effectiveness of Efficiency Criteria for Portfolio Selection," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(01), pages 63-76, March.
  9. Hadar, Josef & Russell, William R, 1969. "Rules for Ordering Uncertain Prospects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 25-34, March.
  10. Peter C. Fishburn, 1984. "Foundations of Risk Measurement. I. Risk As Probable Loss," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(4), pages 396-406, April.
  11. Aumann, Robert J & Kurz, Mordecai, 1977. "Power and Taxes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(5), pages 1137-61, July.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:v:116:y:2008:i:5:p:810-836

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Journals Division).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.