Ambiguity Vs. Risk in Investment Decisions: An Illustration from Green Finance

Caroline Flammer, Thomas Giroux, Geoffrey M. Heal and Marcella Lucchetta
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Caroline Flammer: Columbia University; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI); National University of Singapore (NUS) - Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research (ABFER)
Thomas Giroux: ETH Zürich - Department of Management, Technology, and Economics (D-MTEC)
Geoffrey M. Heal: Columbia University - Columbia Business School, Finance; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Marcella Lucchetta: Ca Foscari University of Venice

No 26-09, Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series from Swiss Finance Institute

Abstract: Does ambiguity (Knightian uncertainty) or risk provide a greater discouragement to investment? There is general agreement in the financial press that uncertainty discourages investment, with uncertainty here meaning any situation where important future policy variables (such as tariffs or tax rates) are not known. And it seems intuitively plausible that situations of ambiguity are “more uncertain” than those of risk: under risk, although the outcome is not known, its expected value is, whereas under ambiguity we have a distribution of possible expected values. In this paper we show that under quite general circumstances ambiguity deters investment more than an equivalent risk. We show that there will always be investments opportunities that are rejected when characterized by ambiguity but are accepted when characterized by risk with an equivalent compound lottery, and that the converse is not true: there are no investments that would be made under ambiguity that would not be made under equivalent risk. We develop the analysis in the context of the emerging field of green finance.

Keywords: Ambiguity Vs. Risk; Investment Decisions; Green Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 G11 H23 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2026-01
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