We use household survey data to construct a direct measure of absolute risk aversion based on the maximum price a consumer is willing to pay to buy a risky asset. We relate this measure to a set of consumers' decisions that in theory should vary with attitude towards risk. We find that elicited...

We examine an economy in which the cost of consuming some goods can be reduced by making commitments to consumption levels that do not vary across states. For example, moral hazard and matching considerations may make it cheaper to produce housing services via owner-occupied than rented housing,...

We study the loan contracing problem of Gale and Hellwig (1985) under general assumptions of risk aversion and possibly diverse subjective beliefs of the borrower and lender about the income of the investment. We characterize the optimal contract and show that (i) the contractual payoff in...

This paper characterizes optimal income tax and audit schemes in the presence of costly enforcement when the agent is risk averse and not necessarily risk neutral. It is shown that the results under risk-neutrality (Chander and Wilde (1998)) largely hold under risk aversion. We first show that...

This paper studies optimal asset allocation to stocks, long-term bonds and T-bills and consumption choice in the presence of regime switching in asset returns. Optimal asset allocations vary considerably across four states - both across bonds and stocks and among large and small stocks - and...

I study preferences defined on the set of real valued random variables as a model of economic behavior under uncertainty. It is well-known that under the Independence Axiom, the utility functional has an expected utility representation. However, the Independence Aiom is often found contradictory...

This paper studies the implications of black-white differences in uninsurable labor market risk for racial differences in the value of human capital. Two approaches to estimate the value of human capital in the presence of heterogeneous labor market risk and preferences for risk are implemented....