Holt-Laury as a gumball machine

Mónica Vasco and María J Vázquez- De Francisco

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 4, 1-13

Abstract: The Holt and Laury [1] task is arguably the most widely employed method for eliciting individual risk attitudes in economics. However, although around 15% of standard experimental subjects fail to complete the task consistently, this fraction increases to an alarming 60-70% in the case of children, teenagers, and other non-standard subject pools. This paper explores extensively a visual version of the Holt and Laury task, where subjects choose six times between two gumball machines. Using a sample of 4,972 adolescents, we find that the Gumball Machine task decreases the presence of inconsistencies substantially to 20%. Cognitive skills appear to be a strong predictor of consistency and risk preferences, but gender differences are not found.

Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0320576

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0320576

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