A coefficient of risk vulnerability

Philomena Bacon, Anna Conte and Peter Moffatt
Additional contact information
Philomena Bacon: Aviva UK & Ireland

No 2016-01, University of East Anglia School of Economics Working Paper Series from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: Panel data from the German SOEP is used to test for risk vulnerability (RV) in the wider population. Two different survey responses are analysed: the response to the question about willingness-to-take risk in general; and the chosen investment in a hypothetical lottery. A con- venient indicator of background risk is the VDAX index, an established measure of volatility in the German stock market. This is used as an explanatory variable in conjunction with HDAX, the stock market index, which proxies wealth. The impacts of these measures on risk attitude are identifiable by exploiting the time dimension of the panel, and matching survey months with corresponding observations from these time-varying factors. Both of the survey responses allow us to test for decreasing absolute risk aversion (DARA); in one case we find strong evidence of DARA, while in the other, we do not. Both survey responses also allow us to test for RV, and in both cases we find strong evidence. In the case of the hypothetical lottery response we are also able to estimate a "coefficient of risk vulnerability" (CRV). This is defined as the absolute amount by which absolute risk aversion rises in response to a doubling of background risk. We estimate CRV to be between 1.03 and 1.27.

Keywords: risk vulnerability; background risk; panel data; survey data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D81 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-01-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-rmg and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ueaeco.github.io/working-papers/papers/ueaeco/UEA-ECO-16-01.pdf main text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uea:ueaeco:2016_01

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Reception, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of East Anglia School of Economics Working Paper Series from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Cara Liggins ().