Risk aversion relates to cognitive ability: Preferences or noise?

Autor(en)
Ola Andersson, Hakan Holm, Jean-Robert Tyran, Erik Wengström
Abstrakt

Recent experimental studies suggest that risk aversion is negatively related to cognitive ability. In this paper we report evidence that this relation may be spurious. We recruit a large subject pool drawn from the general Danish population for our experiment. By presenting subjects with choice tasks that vary the bias induced by random choices, we are able to generate both negative and positive correlations between risk aversion and cognitive ability. Our results suggest that cognitive ability is related to random decision making rather than to risk preferences. (JEL: C81, C91, D12, D81).

Organisation(en)
Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Wiener Zentrum für Experimentelle Wirtschaftsforschung
Externe Organisation(en)
Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Lund University, University of Copenhagen
Journal
Journal of the European Economic Association
Band
14
Seiten
1129–1154
Anzahl der Seiten
26
ISSN
1542-4766
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/jeea.12179
Publikationsdatum
10-2016
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
502045 Verhaltensökonomie, 502021 Mikroökonomie
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/ccafb5d4-c7bb-49e2-8d11-ac58d322356f