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Risk-taking on Behalf of Others

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  • Kristoffer W. Eriksen
  • Ola Kvaløy
  • Miguel Luzuriaga

Abstract

We present an experimental study on how people take risk on behalf of others. We use three different elicitation methods, and study how each subject makes decisions both on behalf of own money and on behalf of another individual’s money. We find a weak tendency of lower risk-taking with others’ money compared to own money. However, subjects believe that other participants take more risk with other people’s money than with their own. At the same time, subjects on average think that others are more risk averse than themselves. The data also reveals that subjects are quite inconsistent when making risk decisions on behalf of others, indicating random behavior. A large majority of subjects alternates between taking more risk, less risk or the same amount of risk with other people’s money compared to own money.

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  • Kristoffer W. Eriksen & Ola Kvaløy & Miguel Luzuriaga, 2017. "Risk-taking on Behalf of Others," CESifo Working Paper Series 6378, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6378
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    1. Kirchler, Michael & Lindner, Florian & Weitzel, Utz, 2020. "Delegated investment decisions and rankings," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    2. Carina Cavalcanti & Andreas Leibbrandt, 2024. "Do Positive Externalities Affect Risk Taking? Experimental Evidence on Gender and Group Membership," Monash Economics Working Papers 2024-05, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    3. Ifcher, John & Zarghamee, Homa, 2020. "Behavioral economic phenomena in decision-making for others," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    4. Felix Holzmeister & Martin Holmén & Michael Kirchler & Matthias Stefan & Erik Wengström, 2023. "Delegation Decisions in Finance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(8), pages 4828-4844, August.
    5. Helena Fornwagner & Monika Pompeo & Nina Serdarevic, 2020. "Him or her? Choosing competition on behalf of someone else," Discussion Papers 2020-13, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    6. Celse, Jeremy & Karakostas, Alexandros & Zizzo, Daniel John, 2023. "Relative risk taking and social curiosity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 243-264.
    7. Christoph Engel & Alexandra Fedorets & Olga Gorelkina, 2018. "How Do Households Allocate Risk?," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1000, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    8. Barrafrem, Kinga & Hausfeld, Jan, 2020. "Tracing risky decisions for oneself and others: The role of intuition and deliberation," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    9. Michael Kirchler & Florian Lindner & Utz Weitzel, 2018. "Delegated Decision Making and Social Competition in the Finance Industry," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2018_08, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    10. Ernan Haruvy & Yefim Roth, 2022. "On the Impact of an Intermediary Agent in the Ultimatum Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-16, May.
    11. Erita Narhetali & Magdalena Smyk & Marek Weretka, 2023. "Empathy in risky choices regarding others," GRAPE Working Papers 91, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    12. Helena Fornwagner & Monika Pompeo & Nina Serdarevic, 2023. "Choosing Competition on Behalf of Someone Else," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(3), pages 1555-1574, March.
    13. Fornasari, Federico & Ploner, Matteo & Soraperra, Ivan, 2020. "Interpersonal risk assessment and social preferences: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    14. Phung, Trang M.T. & Tran, Quoc N. & Nguyen, Nhut H. & Nguyen, Tho H., 2021. "Financial decision-making power and risk taking," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    15. Holzmeister, Felix & Holmén, Martin & Kirchler, Michael & Stefan, Matthias & Wengström, Erik, 2019. "Delegated Decision-Making in Finance," OSF Preprints 3umdf, Center for Open Science.
    16. Robert M. Gillenkirch & Louis Velthuis, 2023. "Delegated risk-taking, accountability, and outcome bias," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 67(2), pages 137-161, October.
    17. Sean Fahle & Santiago I. Sautua, 2021. "How do risk attitudes affect pro-social behavior? Theory and experiment," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 91(1), pages 101-122, July.
    18. Matthias Stefan & Martin Holmén & Felix Holzmeister & Michael Kirchler & Erik Wengström, 2022. "You can’t always get what you want—An experiment on finance professionals' decisions for others," Working Papers 2022-02, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    19. Ibrahim Filiz & Jan René Judek & Marco Lorenz & Markus Spiwoks, 2022. "Algorithm Aversion as an Obstacle in the Establishment of Robo Advisors," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-25, August.
    20. Polman, Evan & Wu, Kaiyang, 2020. "Decision making for others involving risk: A review and meta-analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    21. Eleonore Batteux & Eamonn Ferguson & Richard J Tunney, 2019. "Do our risk preferences change when we make decisions for others? A meta-analysis of self-other differences in decisions involving risk," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-19, May.
    22. Cavalcanti, Carina & Fleming, Christopher & Leibbrandt, Andreas, 2022. "Risk externalities and gender: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 51-64.
    23. Ploner, Matteo & Saredi, Viola, 2020. "Exploration and delegation in risky choices," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 88(C).

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    risk-taking; other people's money; beliefs; preferences; experiment;
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