IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2110.11245.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evolutionary Foundation for Heterogeneity in Risk Aversion

Author

Listed:
  • Yuval Heller
  • Ilan Nehama

Abstract

We examine the evolutionary basis for risk aversion with respect to aggregate risk. We study populations in which agents face choices between alternatives with different levels of aggregate risk. We show that the choices that maximize the long-run growth rate are induced by a heterogeneous population in which the least and most risk-averse agents are indifferent between facing an aggregate risk and obtaining its linear and harmonic mean for sure, respectively. Moreover, approximately optimal behavior can be induced by a simple distribution according to which all agents have constant relative risk aversion, and the coefficient of relative risk aversion is uniformly distributed between zero and two.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuval Heller & Ilan Nehama, 2021. "Evolutionary Foundation for Heterogeneity in Risk Aversion," Papers 2110.11245, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2023.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2110.11245
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2110.11245
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steiner, Jakub & Netzer, Nick & Robson, Arthur & Kocourek, Pavel, 2021. "Endogenous Risk Attitudes," CEPR Discussion Papers 16190, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Duffie, Darrell & Sun, Yeneng, 2012. "The exact law of large numbers for independent random matching," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 1105-1139.
    3. Arthur J. Robson & Larry Samuelson, 2009. "The Evolution of Time Preference with Aggregate Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1925-1953, December.
    4. Nick Netzer, 2009. "Evolution of Time Preferences and Attitudes toward Risk," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 937-955, June.
    5. Yuval Heller, 2014. "Overconfidence and Diversification," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 134-153, February.
    6. Faruk Gul & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 2006. "Random Expected Utility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(1), pages 121-146, January.
    7. Robatto, Roberto & Szentes, Balázs, 2017. "On the biological foundation of risk preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 410-422.
    8. Heller, Yuval & Robson, Arthur J., 2021. "Evolution, heritable risk and skewness loving," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(2), May.
    9. Pierre‐André Chiappori & Monica Paiella, 2011. "Relative Risk Aversion Is Constant: Evidence From Panel Data," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(6), pages 1021-1052, December.
    10. Thomas J Brennan & Andrew W Lo, 2012. "An Evolutionary Model of Bounded Rationality and Intelligence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-8, November.
    11. Curry, Philip A., 2001. "Decision Making under Uncertainty and the Evolution of Interdependent Preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 357-369, June.
    12. Robson, Arthur J., 1996. "A Biological Basis for Expected and Non-expected Utility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 397-424, February.
    13. Arthur J. Robson & H. Allen Orr, 2021. "Evolved attitudes to risk and the demand for equity," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118(26), pages 2015569118-, June.
    14. Robson, Arthur J. & Samuelson, Larry, 2019. "Evolved attitudes to idiosyncratic and aggregate risk in age-structured populations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 44-81.
    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


    Cited by:

    1. Manuel Staab, 2023. "Evolution of Risk-Taking Behaviour and Status Preferences in Anti-coordination Games," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 1320-1342, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Heller, Yuval & Nehama, Ilan, 2023. "Evolutionary foundation for heterogeneity in risk aversion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    2. Heller, Yuval & Robson, Arthur J., 2021. "Evolution, heritable risk and skewness loving," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(2), May.
    3. Heller, Yuval & Robson, Arthur, 2019. "Evolution and Preference for Local Risk," MPRA Paper 95264, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Robson, Arthur & Samuelson, Larry, 2022. "The evolution of risk attitudes with fertility thresholds," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    5. Herold, Florian & Netzer, Nick, 2023. "Second-best probability weighting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 112-125.
    6. Wu, Jiabin & Zhang, Hanzhe, 2021. "Preference evolution in different matching markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    7. Robson, Arthur J. & Samuelson, Larry, 2019. "Evolved attitudes to idiosyncratic and aggregate risk in age-structured populations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 44-81.
    8. Philip A. Curry & John E. Roemer, 2012. "Evolutionary Stability of Kantian Optimization," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 200(1), pages 131-146, March.
    9. Moshe Levy, 2022. "An evolutionary explanation of the Allais paradox," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 32(5), pages 1545-1574, November.
    10. Songjia Fan & Yi Tao & Cong Li, 2022. "Evolutionary rationality of risk preference," Papers 2206.09813, arXiv.org.
    11. Thomas J Brennan & Andrew W Lo, 2012. "An Evolutionary Model of Bounded Rationality and Intelligence," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-8, November.
    12. Moritz Hetzer & Didier Sornette, 2013. "An Evolutionary Model of Cooperation, Fairness and Altruistic Punishment in Public Good Games," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(11), pages 1-13, November.
    13. Olivier Gossner & Christoph Kuzmics, 2019. "Preferences Under Ignorance," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(1), pages 241-257, February.
    14. Nick Netzer, 2009. "Evolution of Time Preferences and Attitudes toward Risk," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 937-955, June.
    15. Andrew W. Lo & H. Allen Orr & Ruixun Zhang, 2018. "The growth of relative wealth and the Kelly criterion," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 49-67, April.
    16. Robatto, Roberto & Szentes, Balázs, 2017. "On the biological foundation of risk preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 410-422.
    17. Levy, Moshe, 2015. "An evolutionary explanation for risk aversion," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 51-61.
    18. Fabrizio Adriani & Silvia Sonderegger, 2018. "The Signaling Value of Punishing Norm-Breakers and Rewarding Norm-Followers," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-32, December.
    19. Jason Collins & Boris Baer & Ernst Juerg Weber, 2016. "Evolutionary Biology in Economics: A Review," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 92(297), pages 291-312, June.
    20. Roee Teper, 2014. "The Endowment Effect as a Blessing," Working Paper 5862, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2110.11245. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.