Prudence and prevention: Empirical evidence

Thomas Mayrhofer and Hendrik Schmitz

No 863, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: Theoretical papers show that optimal prevention decisions in the sense of selfprotection (i.e., primary prevention) depend not only on the level of (second-order) risk aversion but also on higher-order risk preferences such as prudence (third-order risk aversion). We study empirically whether these theoretical results hold and whether prudent individuals show less preventive (self-protection) effort than non-prudent individuals. We use a unique dataset that combines data on higher-order risk preferences and various measures of observed real-world prevention behavior. We find that prudent individuals indeed invest less in self-protection as measured by influenza vaccination. This result is driven by high risk individuals such as individuals >60 years of age or chronically ill. We do not find a clear empirical relationship between riskpreferences and prevention in the sense of self-insurance (i.e. secondary prevention). Neither risk aversion nor prudence is related to cancer screenings such as mammograms, Pap smears or X-rays of the lung.

Keywords: prudence; risk preferences; prevention; vaccination; screening (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D81 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-rmg and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/224092/1/1729843999.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Prudence and prevention - Empirical evidence* (2020)
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:zbw:rwirep:863

DOI: 10.4419/96973000

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().