Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/141524 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9765
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Field constraints often necessitate choosing an elicitation task that is intuitive, easy to explain, and simple to implement. Given that subject behavior often differs dramatically across tasks when eliciting risk preferences, caution needs to be exercised in choosing one risk elicitation task over another in the face of field constraints. We compare behavior in the simple most investment game (Gneezy and Potters 1997) and the ordered lottery choice game (Eckel and Grossman 2002) to evaluate whether the simpler task allows us to elicit attitudes consistent with those elicited from the ordered lottery task. Using a sample of over 2000 Indian undergraduate students, we find risk attitudes to be fairly stable across the two tasks. Our results further indicate that the consistency of risk attitudes across the tasks depends on gender of the subject, quantitative skills, father's education level, and dispositional factors such as locus of control and Big Five personality traits.
Subjects: 
risk preferences
experiment design
elicitation methods
personality traits
India
JEL: 
C91
C81
D81
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
284.87 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.