The influence of risk aversion on the decision to become self-employed is a much discussed topic in the entrepreneurial literature. Conventional wisdom asserts that the role model of an entrepreneur requires to make risky decisions in uncertain environments and hence that more risk-averse...

We analyse risk preferences using an experiment with real incentives in a representative sample of 1,422 Dutch respondents. Our econometric model incorporates four structural parameters that vary with observed and unobserved characteristics: Utility curvature, loss aversion, preferences towards...

We looked at risk and ambiguity attitudes among Ethiopian peasants in one of the poorest regions of the world and compared their attitudes to a standard Western university student sample elicited by the same decision task. Strong risk aversion and ambiguity aversion were found with the Ethiopian...

Most studies on the role of incentives on risk attitude report data obtained from within-subject experimental investigations. This may however raise an issue of sequentiality of effects as later choices may be influenced by earlier ones. This paper reports instead between-subject results on the...

The ratio bias - according to which individuals prefer to bet on probabilities expressed as a ratio of large numbers to normatively equivalent or superior probabilities expressed as a ratio of small numbers - has recently gained momentum, with researchers especially in health economics...

When unemployed persons go into business, they often are characterized as necessity entrepreneurs, because push factors, namely their unemployment, likely prompted their decision. In contrast to this, business founders who have been previously employed represent opportunity entrepreneurs because...

We explore the relationship between gambling and other forms of risk-taking behaviour, i.e. exposure to debt and the use of credit, at the individual and household level using representative pooled cross-section data drawn from the UK Expenditure and Food Surveys (EFS), 2001 to 2007. Gambling...

Andreoni and Sprenger (in press) report evidence that distinct utility functions govern choices under certainty and risk. I investigate the robustness of their result to the experimental design. I find that the effect disappears completely when a multiple price list is used instead of a convex...

We study whether natural disasters affect risk-taking behavior exploiting geographic variation in exposure to natural disasters. We conduct standard risk games (using real money) with randomly selected individuals in Indonesia and find that individuals who recently suffered a flood or earthquake...

A common premise in both the theoretical and policy literatures on development is that people remain poor because they are too impatient to save and too risk averse to take the sort of chances needed to accumulate wealth. The empirical literature, however, suggests that this assumption is far...