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Understanding the Two Components of Risk Attitudes: An Experimental Analysis

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Author Info
Jianying Qiu () (Department of Economics, University of Innsbruck)
Eva-Maria Steiger () (Stratigic Interaction Group, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena)

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Abstract

Economics and management science share the tradition of ordering risk aversion by ï¬tting the best expected utility (EU) model with a certain utility function to individual data, and then using the utility curvature for each individual as the sole index of risk attitude. (Cumulative) Prospect theory (CPT) has demonstrated various empirical deï¬ciencies of EU and introduced the weighting of probabilities as an additional component to capture risk attitude. However, if utility curvature and probability weighting were strongly correlated, the utility curvature in EU alone, while not properly describing risky behavior in general, would still capture most of the variance regarding degrees of risk aversion. This study shows, however, that such a strong correlation does not exist. Though, most individuals exhibit concave utility and convex probability weighting, the two components show no correlation. Thus neglecting one component entails a loss.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Max-Planck-Institute of Economics in its series Jena Economic Research Papers in Economics with number 2009-088.

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Date of creation: 02 Nov 2009
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Handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2009-088

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Related research
Keywords: risk attitudes; cumulative prospect theory; experimental study;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

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This page was last updated on 2009-12-15.


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