The Role of Risk Aversion in Predicting Individual Behaviour

Monica Paiella and Luigi Guiso ()

No 222, Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings from Econometric Society

Abstract: We use household survey data to construct a direct measure of absolute risk aversion based on the maximum price a consumer is willing to pay to buy a risky asset. We relate this measure to a set of consumers' decisions that in theory should vary with attitude towards risk. We find that elicited risk aversion has considerable predictive power for a number of key household decisions such as choice of occupation, portfolio selection, moving decisions and exposure to chronic diseases in ways consistent with theory. We also use this indicator to address the importance of self-selection when relating indicators of risk to individual saving decisions

Keywords: Risk aversion; heterogeneous preferences; choice under risk; entrepreneurship; self selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 D8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-fin
Date: 2004-08-11
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Related works:
Working Paper: THE ROLE OF RISK AVERSION IN PREDICTING INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR (2005)
Working Paper: The Role of Risk Aversion in Predicting Individual Behaviours (2004)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecm:latm04:222

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