Attitudes toward uncertainty among the poor: an experiment in rural Ethiopia

Alpaslan Akay (), Peter Martinsson, Haileselassie Medhin and Stefan Trautmann

Theory and Decision, 2012, vol. 73, issue 3, 453-464

Abstract: We investigate risk and ambiguity attitudes among Ethiopian farmers in one of the poorest regions of the world. Strong risk aversion and ambiguity aversion were found with the Ethiopian farmers. We compared their attitudes to those of a Western university student sample elicited by the same decision task. Ambiguity aversion was similar for farmers and students, but farmers were more risk averse. Our results show that ambiguity aversion is not restricted to Western student populations, and that studies of agricultural decisions may benefit from explicitly considering ambiguity attitudes. Copyright The Author(s) 2012

Keywords: Risk attitudes; Ambiguity attitudes; Poverty; Agriculture; D81; C93; O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11238-011-9250-y

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