Risk Attitudes and Conflict in the Household

Marta Serra-Garcia

The Economic Journal, 2022, vol. 132, issue 642, 767-795

Abstract: Risk attitudes determine decision making by individuals. Theoretically, heterogeneity in risk attitudes also affects household behaviour, increasing or decreasing marital instability, depending on whether households benefit primarily from sharing public goods or risk. Using a nationally representative sample with repeated measurements of risk attitudes, this paper shows that intrahousehold heterogeneity in risk attitudes is an economically and statistically significant predictor of future marital instability. Consistent with models of public good sharing, preference heterogeneity is associated with less public good sharing. Furthermore, risk attitudes converge within stable households over time. These findings highlight the empirical relevance of risk attitudes in explaining household behaviour.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/ueab054 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:econjl:v:132:y:2022:i:642:p:767-795.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Economic Journal is currently edited by Francesco Lippi

More articles in The Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press () and ().