IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cda/wpaper/88.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring risk aversion with lists: A new bias

Author

Listed:
  • Antoni Bosch-Domènech
  • Joaquim Silvestre

    (Department of Economics, University of California Davis)

Abstract

Various experimental procedures aimed at measuring individual risk aversion involve a list of pairs of alternative prospects. We first study the widely used method by Holt and Laury (2002), for which we find that the removal of some items from the lists yields a systematic decrease in risk aversion. This bias is quite distinct from other confounds that have been previously observed in the use of the Holt and Laury method. It may be related to empirical phenomena and theoretical developments where better prospects increase risk aversion. Nevertheless, we have also found that the more recent elicitation method due to Abdellaoui et al. (2011), also based on lists, does not display any statistically significant bias when the corresponding items of the list are removed. Our results suggest that methods other than the popular Holt and Laury one may be preferable for the measurement of risk aversion.

Suggested Citation

  • Antoni Bosch-Domènech & Joaquim Silvestre, 2012. "Measuring risk aversion with lists: A new bias," Working Papers 88, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:88
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.dss.ucdavis.edu/files/yS64VhEkxYVoebtxvWXMJTFD/12-10.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Louis Lévy-Garboua & Hela Maafi & David Masclet & Antoine Terracol, 2012. "Risk aversion and framing effects," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(1), pages 128-144, March.
    2. Bosch-Domènech, Antoni & Silvestre, Joaquim, 2010. "Averting risk in the face of large losses: Bernoulli vs. Tversky and Kahneman," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 180-182, May.
    3. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2005. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects: New Data without Order Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 902-912, June.
    4. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Ahmed Driouchi & Olivier L’Haridon, 2011. "Risk aversion elicitation: reconciling tractability and bias minimization," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 71(1), pages 63-80, July.
    5. Wilfred Amaldoss & James R. Bettman & John W. Payne, 2008. "—Biased but Efficient: An Investigation of Coordination Facilitated by Asymmetric Dominance," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(5), pages 903-921, 09-10.
    6. Huber, Joel & Payne, John W & Puto, Christopher, 1982. "Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives: Violations of Regularity and the Similarity Hypothesis," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 9(1), pages 90-98, June.
    7. Holt, Charles A, 1986. "Preference Reversals and the Independence Axiom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(3), pages 508-515, June.
    8. Bosch-Domenech, Antoni & Silvestre, Joaquim, 1999. "Does risk aversion or attraction depend on income? An experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 265-273, December.
    9. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    10. Isaac, R Mark & James, Duncan, 2000. "Just Who Are You Calling Risk Averse?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 177-187, March.
    11. Ian Bateman & Brett Day & Graham Loomes & Robert Sugden, 2007. "Can ranking techniques elicit robust values?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 49-66, February.
    12. Chetan Dave & Catherine Eckel & Cathleen Johnson & Christian Rojas, 2010. "Eliciting risk preferences: When is simple better?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 219-243, December.
    13. Atanu Saha, 1993. "Expo-Power Utility: A ‘Flexible’ Form for Absolute and Relative Risk Aversion," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 75(4), pages 905-913.
    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. Anna Conte & M. Vittoria Levati & Chiara Nardi, 2018. "Risk Preferences and the Role of Emotions," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 85(338), pages 305-328, April.

    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. Antoni Bosch-Domènech & Joaquim Silvestre, 2013. "Measuring risk aversion with lists: a new bias," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(4), pages 465-496, October.
    2. Antoni Bosch-Domènech & Joaquim Silvestre, 2012. "Measuring risk aversion with lists: A new bias," Working Papers 239, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    3. Antoni Bosch-Domènech & Joaquim Silvestre, 2013. "Measuring risk aversion with lists: a new bias," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(4), pages 465-496, October.
    4. Tamás Csermely & Alexander Rabas, 2016. "How to reveal people’s preferences: Comparing time consistency and predictive power of multiple price list risk elicitation methods," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 107-136, December.
    5. Holzmeister, Felix & Stefan, Matthias, 2019. "The Risk Elicitation Puzzle Revisited: Across-Methods (In)consistency?," OSF Preprints pj9u2, Center for Open Science.
    6. Felix Holzmeister & Matthias Stefan, 2021. "The risk elicitation puzzle revisited: Across-methods (in)consistency?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 593-616, June.
    7. Felix Holzmeister & Matthias Stefan, 2019. "The risk elicitation puzzle revisited: Across-methods (in)consistency?," Working Papers 2019-19, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    8. Giuseppe Attanasi & Nikolaos Georgantzís & Valentina Rotondi & Daria Vigani, 2018. "Lottery- and survey-based risk attitudes linked through a multichoice elicitation task," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 84(3), pages 341-372, May.
    9. Meraner, Manuela & Musshoff, Oliver & Finger, Robert, 2018. "Using involvement to reduce inconsistencies in risk preference elicitation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 22-33.
    10. Bauermeister, Golo-Friedrich & Mußhoff, Oliver, 2016. "Risk Attitude And Inconsistencies - Does The Choice Of Display Format And Risk Elicitation Method Influence The Outcomes?," 56th Annual Conference, Bonn, Germany, September 28-30, 2016 244764, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA).
    11. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Machado, Sara R. & Miniaci, Raffaele, 2016. "Temporal stability, cross-validity, and external validity of risk preferences measures: experimental evidence from a UK representative sample," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67554, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Howard Kunreuther & Erwann Michel-Kerjan, 2015. "Demand for fixed-price multi-year contracts: Experimental evidence from insurance decisions," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 171-194, October.
    13. Jan-Erik Loennqvist & Markku Verkasalo & Gari Walkowitz & Philipp C. Wichardt, 2011. "Measuring Individual Risk Attitudes in the Lab: Task or Ask? An Empirical Comparison," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 02-03, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    14. Lönnqvist, Jan-Erik & Verkasalo, Markku & Walkowitz, Gari & Wichardt, Philipp C., 2015. "Measuring individual risk attitudes in the lab: Task or ask? An empirical comparison," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 254-266.
    15. Alejandro Arrieta & Ariadna García‐Prado & Paula González & José Luis Pinto‐Prades, 2017. "Risk attitudes in medical decisions for others: An experimental approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(S3), pages 97-113, December.
    16. Ihli, Hanna Julia & Chiputwa, Brian & Musshoff, Oliver, 2013. "Do Changing Probabilities or Payoffs in Lottery-Choice Experiments Matter? Evidence from Rural Uganda," GlobalFood Discussion Papers 158146, Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development.
    17. Holgar Müller & Eike Benjamin Kroll & Bodo Vogt, 2009. "Fact or Artifact Does the compromise effect occur when subjects face real consequences of their choices?," FEMM Working Papers 09009, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    18. Antonio FILIPPIN & Paolo CROSETTO, 2014. "A Reconsideration of Gender Differences in Risk Attitudes," Departmental Working Papers 2014-01, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    19. James Cox & Vjollca Sadiraj & Ulrich Schmidt, 2015. "Paradoxes and mechanisms for choice under risk," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(2), pages 215-250, June.
    20. Antoni Bosch-Domènech & Joaquim Silvestre, 2006. "Risk aversion and embedding bias," Economics Working Papers 934, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Risk aversion; risk attitudes; experiments; lists; elicitation method; Holt; Laury; Abdellaoui; Driouchi; l?Haridon; independence axiom;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    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:cda:wpaper:88. 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: Letters and Science IT Services Unit (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdus.html .

    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.