Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/36107 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 4545
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Most studies on the role of incentives on risk attitude report data obtained from within-subject experimental investigations. This may however raise an issue of sequentiality of effects as later choices may be influenced by earlier ones. This paper reports instead between-subject results on the effect of monetary stakes on risk attitudes for small probability prospects in a laboratory experiment. Under low stakes, we find the typical risk seeking behavior for small probabilities predicted by the prospect theory. But under high stakes, we provide some evidence that risk seeking behavior is dramatically reduced. This could suggest that utility is not consistently concave over the outcome space, but rather contains a convex section for very small amounts.
Subjects: 
Risk attitude
incentives
decision
experiment
JEL: 
C91
D81
D89
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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