Fans, Frames and Risk Aversion: How Robust is the Common Consequence Effect?

An experiment and subjective Bayesian statistical methods are used to investigate how robust the common consequence effect is to changes in frame that make pure increases in risk transparent. We find that subjects avoid pure increases in risk when such risks are transparent, but not otherwise, and that there is no correlation between risk attitudes in frames that alternately mask and make transparent pure increases in risk. The common consequence effect is nearly frame independent, but no more predictable (marginally or jointly) than by chance in the sense of Laplace's law of succession.