Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/232024 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
SAFE Working Paper No. 311
Publisher: 
Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, Frankfurt a. M.
Abstract: 
The pricing of an ambiguous asset, whose cash flow stream is uncertain, may be affected by three factors: the belief regarding the realization likelihood of cash flows, the subjective attitude towards risk, and the attitude towards ambiguity. While previous literature looks at the total price discount under ambiguity, this paper investigates with laboratory experiments how much effect each factor can induce. We apply both non-parametric and parametric methods to cleanly separate the belief effects, the risk premiums, and the ambiguity premiums from each other. Both methods lead to similar results: Overall, subjects have substantial ambiguity aversion, and ambiguity premiums account for the largest price deviation component when the degree of ambiguity is high. As information accumulates, ambiguity premiums decrease. We also find that beliefs do influence prices under ambiguity. This is not because beliefs are biased towards either good or bad scenarios per se, but because subjects display sticky belief updating as new information becomes available. The clear separation performed in this paper between belief and attitude also enables a more accurate estimation of the parameter of ambiguity aversion compared to previous studies, since the effect of beliefs is partialled out. Overall, we find empirically that both factors, belief and attitude towards ambiguity, are important factors in pricing under ambiguity.
Subjects: 
ambiguity
belief estimation
belief effect
ambiguity premium
laboratory experiments
JEL: 
D81
D83
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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