Economists attribute many common behaviors to risk aversion and frequently focus on how wealth moderates risk preferences. This paper highlights a problem associated with empirical tests of the relationship between wealth and risk aversion that can arise when the probabilities individuals face are unobservable to researchers. The common remedy for unobservable probabilities involves the estimation of probabilities in a profit or production that includes farmer, farm and agro-climatic variables. Unfortunately, these variables are often correlated with wealth such that estimated probabilities are likely to leave statistical fingerprints on subsequently-estimated risk aversion coefficients and may thereby introduce spurious correlations between wealth and risk preferences. In this paper, we use data from an experiment conducted among 290 Indian farmers to detect these spurious correlations. We estimate coefficients of risk aversion with known probabilities and with estimated probabilities and compare subsequent correlations with wealth and other farmer traits. We estimate 'Âunobservable'Â probabilities in conjunction with risk preferences following a standard field data approach. We explore the statistical implications of estimating probabilities by comparing correlations between wealth and these two sets of estimated risk preferences. These comparisons show how estimated probabilities can change risk aversion coefficients substantially and introduce spurious correlations between risk aversion and wealth.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. 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.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association) in its series 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA with number
21167.
Length: Date of creation: 2006 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea06:21167
Contact details of provider: Postal: 555 East Wells Street, Suite 1100, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Phone: (414) 918-3190 Fax: (414) 276-3349 Email: Web page: http://www.aaea.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (AgEcon Search).
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.:
Did you know? All full texts are decentralized with the publishers, none reside on this server, thus making it possible to offer this service for free to all parties.