The determinants of risk attitude in couples are explored using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel over the period 2004 to 2009. The focus of the analysis is the repeated responses to the survey question about general willingness to take risk. Responses to this question are provided on a...

Often in cooperative situations, many aspects of the decision-making environment are uncertain. We investigate how cooperation is shaped by the way information about risk is presented (from description or from experience) and by differences in risky environments. Drawing on research from risky...

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...

We perform a comparative analysis of five incentivized tasks used to elicit risk preferences. Theoretically, we compare the elicitation methods in terms of completeness of the range of the estimates as well as their precision, the likelihood of triggering loss aversion, and problems arising when...

Social lotteries are lotteries that are played along with someone else. The experimental literature indicates that risk attitudes depend on how one's situation in the safe alternative compares to that of a peer. Evaluation of the risky alternative also depends on whether the lottery gives equal...

Although the role of formal and informal institutions in promoting economic growth and sustaining exchange relations is now well established, explaining and differentiating how informal and formal rules affect individual behavior remain a challenge. This study aims to distill the essential...

We study in an experiment whether humans prefer to depend on decisions of other humans (social uncertainty) or states of nature (environmental uncertainty). In the social uncertainty treatments subjects depend only on past decisions of other humans. This is the first experiment that studies...

Willingness to take risk depends on whether the risk affects others as well as oneself and on how the risk affects one´s position vis-á-vis others. Taking a bet can improve one´s position relative to others or threaten it. We present an experiment that explores individual attitudes to...

Previous studies have shown that other-regarding concerns are weakened under risky situations. Daily experience also suggests that people care more about an identifiable than about an unidentifiable third person. We report on an experiment designed to explore whether rendering the other...

We experimentally investigate competition in innovation in a patent race scenario. Pairs of subjects compete as seller firms on a duopoly market, engaging in risky search investments. Successful innovation is rewarded through temporary monopoly rents. Throughout the interaction, subjects receive...