The "Bomb" Risk Elicitation Task

Paolo Crosetto and Antonio Filippin

No 6710, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper presents the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task (BRET), an intuitive procedure aimed at measuring risk attitudes. Subjects decide how many boxes to collect out of 100, one of which containing a bomb. Earnings increase linearly with the number of boxes accumulated but are zero if the bomb is also collected. The BRET requires minimal numeracy skills, avoids truncation of the data, allows to precisely estimate both risk aversion and risk seeking, and is not affected by the degree of loss aversion or by violations of the Reduction Axiom. We validate the task and test its robustness in a large-scale experiment. Choices react significantly to the stakes and to the size of the choice set. Our experiment rationalizes the gender gap that often characterizes choices under uncertainty by means of a higher loss rather than risk aversion.

Keywords: elicitation method; loss aversion; risk aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 C91 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2012-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published in: Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2013, 47(1), 31-65

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp6710.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The “bomb” risk elicitation task (2013)
Working Paper: The "Bomb" Risk Elicitation Task (2012)
Working Paper: The "Bomb" Risk Elicitation Task (2012)
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:iza:izadps:dp6710

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().