IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/avs/wpaper/98.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Risk aversion at the country level

Author

Listed:
  • Nestor Gandelman

    (Universidad ORT Uruguay. Facultad de Administración y Ciencias Sociales. Departmento de Economía)

  • Rubén Hernández-Murillo

    (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)

Abstract

In this paper we provide estimates of relative risk aversion for 80 countries using data on selfreports of personal well-being from the Gallup World Poll. For most countries we cannot reject the null hypothesis that the coefficient of relative risk aversion equals 1. This result supports the use of the log utility function in numerical simulations.

Suggested Citation

  • Nestor Gandelman & Rubén Hernández-Murillo, 2014. "Risk aversion at the country level," Documentos de Investigación 98, Universidad ORT Uruguay. Facultad de Administración y Ciencias Sociales.
    • Handle: RePEc:avs:wpaper:98
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dspace.ort.edu.uy/bitstream/handle/20.500.11968/2743/documentodeinvestigacion98.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garcia, Rene & Luger, Richard & Renault, Eric, 2003. "Empirical assessment of an intertemporal option pricing model with latent variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1-2), pages 49-83.
    2. Andrew E. Clark & Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields, 2008. "Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 95-144, March.
    3. Hansen, Lars Peter & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1983. "Stochastic Consumption, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Asset Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(2), pages 249-265, April.
    4. Gordon S. & St-Amour P., 2004. "Asset Returns and State-Dependent Risk Preferences," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 22, pages 241-252, July.
    5. George MacKerron, 2012. "Happiness Economics From 35 000 Feet," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 705-735, September.
    6. Raj Chetty, 2006. "A New Method of Estimating Risk Aversion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1821-1834, December.
    7. Kapteyn, Arie & Teppa, Federica, 2011. "Subjective measures of risk aversion, fixed costs, and portfolio choice," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 564-580, August.
    8. Larry G. Epstein & Stanley E. Zin, 2013. "Substitution, risk aversion and the temporal behavior of consumption and asset returns: A theoretical framework," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 12, pages 207-239, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Leonardo Gasparini & Pablo Glüzmann, 2012. "Estimating Income Poverty and Inequality from the GallupWorld Poll: The case of Latin America and the Caribbean," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 21(1), pages 3-27, March.
    10. Geweke, John, 2001. "A note on some limitations of CRRA utility," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 341-345, June.
    11. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    12. Gandelman, Néstor & Hernández-Murillo, Rubén, 2013. "What do happiness and health satisfaction data tell us about relative risk aversion?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 301-312.
    13. Epstein, Larry G & Zin, Stanley E, 1991. "Substitution, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Consumption and Asset Returns: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 263-286, April.
    14. Néstor Gandelman & Rafael Porzecanski, 2013. "Happiness Inequality: How Much is Reasonable?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 110(1), pages 257-269, January.
    15. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Paul Frijters, 2004. "How Important is Methodology for the estimates of the determinants of Happiness?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(497), pages 641-659, July.
    16. Mankiw, N Gregory, 1985. "Consumer Durables and the Real Interest Rate," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(3), pages 353-362, August.
    17. Szpiro, George G. & Outreville, Jean-Francois, 1988. "Relative risk aversion around the world : Further results," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 6(1, Supple), pages 127-128, January.
    18. Friend, Irwin & Blume, Marshall E, 1975. "The Demand for Risky Assets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(5), pages 900-922, December.
    19. Neely, Christopher J & Roy, Amlan & Whiteman, Charles H, 2001. "Risk Aversion versus Intertemporal Substitution: A Case Study of Identification Failure in the Intertemporal Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 19(4), pages 395-403, October.
    20. Kenneth G. Stewart, 2011. "The Optimal Construction of Instruments in Nonlinear Regression: Implications for GMM Inference," Econometrics Working Papers 1107, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Gandelman, Néstor & Hernández-Murillo, Rubén, 2013. "What do happiness and health satisfaction data tell us about relative risk aversion?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 301-312.
    2. Parro, Francisco, 2024. "Unveiling the impact of income taxes on inequality in a HACT model," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    3. J. François Outreville, 2015. "The Relationship Between Relative Risk Aversion And The Level Of Education: A Survey And Implications For The Demand For Life Insurance," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 97-111, February.
    4. Yi, Zhen & Zhu, Chao & Zhang, Yuwei, 2024. "Why risk attitude differs between macro and micro level? A decoherence perspective," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 978-997.
    5. Alan Guoming Huang & Eric Hughson & J. Chris Leach, 2016. "Generational Asset Pricing, Equity Puzzles, and Cyclicality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 52-71, October.
    6. Stuart Hyde & Mohamed Sherif, 2004. "Don't break the habit: structural stability tests of consumption models in the UK," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2003 49, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    7. Gomes, Fábio Augusto Reis & Paz, Lourenço S., 2013. "Estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution: Is the aggregate financial return free from the weak instrument problem?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 63-75.
    8. Angelo Melino & Alan X. Yang, 2003. "State Dependent Preferences Can Explain the Equity Premium Puzzle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 6(4), pages 806-830, October.
    9. Stuart Hyde & Mohamed Sherif, 2005. "Consumption Asset Pricing Models: Evidence From The Uk," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 73(3), pages 343-363, June.
    10. Murtin, Fabrice & Boarini, Romina & Cordoba, Juan Carlos & Ripoll, Marla, 2017. "Beyond GDP: Is there a law of one shadow price?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 390-411.
    11. Gomes, Fábio Augusto Reis & Ribeiro, Priscila Fernandes, 2015. "Estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution taking into account the precautionary savings motive," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 108-123.
    12. Campbell, John Y, 1996. "Understanding Risk and Return," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(2), pages 298-345, April.
    13. Hardouvelis, Gikas A. & Kim, Dongcheol & Wizman, Thierry A., 1996. "Asset pricing models with and without consumption data: An empirical evaluation," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 267-301, September.
    14. Campbell, John Y, 1993. "Intertemporal Asset Pricing without Consumption Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 487-512, June.
    15. Smith, William T., 1999. "Risk, the Spirit of Capitalism and Growth: The Implications of a Preference for Capital," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 241-262, April.
    16. James Alm, 2019. "What Motivates Tax Compliance?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 353-388, April.
    17. Smith, William & Son, Young Seob, 2005. "Can the desire to conserve our natural resources be self-defeating?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 52-67, January.
    18. Christopher Ambrey & Christopher Fleming, 2014. "Life Satisfaction in Australia: Evidence from Ten Years of the HILDA Survey," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 115(2), pages 691-714, January.
    19. Dominique Pépin & Stephen M. Miller, 2020. "The Time-Varying Nature of Risk Aversion: Evidence from 60 Years of U.S. Stock Market Data," Working papers 2020-09, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    20. Epstein, Larry G. & Zin, Stanley E., 2001. "The independence axiom and asset returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(5), pages 537-572, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    relative risk aversion; happiness; personal well-being;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    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:avs:wpaper:98. 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: Verónica Rodríguez (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/faortuy.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.