Individuals’ preferences for risk and inequality are measured through experimental choices between hypothetical societies and lotteries. The median relative risk aversion, which is often seen to reflect social inequality aversion, is between 2 and 3. We also estimate the individual inequality...

A number of competing social preference models have been developed inspired by the evidence from economic experiments. We test the relative performance of some of these models using an experimental design that is aimed at capturing pure distributional concerns in a multi-person setting. We find...

The purpose of this study is to compare value of statistical life (VSL) estimates for traffic, drowning and fire accidents. Using a choice experiment in a mail survey of 5000 Swedish respondents we estimated the willingness to pay for risk reductions in the three accidents. In the experiment...

We design a donations vs. own money choice experiment comparing three different treatments. In two of the treatments the pay-offs are hypothetical. In the first of these, a short cheap talk script was used, and subjects were required to state their own preferences in this scenario. In the...

This paper reports results from an economic experiment where respondents are asked to make choices between risky outcomes for themselves and others. In addition, we elicit information about the respondents’ perception of others risk preferences. We investigate whether subjects’ own risk...

Individuals’ aversion to risk and inequality, and their concern for relative standing, are measured through experimental choices between hypothetical societies. It is found that on average individuals are both fairly inequality-averse and have a strong concern for relative income. The results...