Risky business: an analysis of teacher risk preferences

Daniel H. Bowen, Stuart Buck, Cary Deck (), Jonathan N. Mills and James V. Shuls

Education Economics, 2015, vol. 23, issue 4, 470-480

Abstract: A range of proposals aim to reform teacher compensation, recruitment, and retention. Teachers have generally not embraced these policies. One potential explanation for their objections is that teachers are relatively risk averse. We examine this hypothesis using a risk-elicitation task common to experimental economics. By comparing preferences of new teachers with those entering other professions, we find that individuals choosing to teach are significantly more risk averse. This suggests that the teaching profession may attract individuals who are less amenable to certain reforms. Policy-makers should take into account teacher risk characteristics when considering reforms that may clash with preferences.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09645292.2014.966062 (text/html)
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:taf:edecon:v:23:y:2015:i:4:p:470-480

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEDE20

DOI: 10.1080/09645292.2014.966062

Access Statistics for this article

Education Economics is currently edited by Caren Wareing and Steve Bradley

More articles in Education Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().