We provide necessary and sufficient conditions on an individual's expected utility function under which any zero-mean idiosyncratic risk increases cautiousness (the derivative of the reciprocal of the absolute risk aversion), which is the key determinant for this individual's demand for options...

We provide a necessary and a sufficient condition on an individual's expected utility function under which any zero-mean idiosyncratic risk increases cautiousness (the derivative of the reciprocal of the absolute risk aversion), which is the key determinant for this individual's demand for...

A structural inter-temporal model of agricultural asset arbitrage equilibrium is developed and applied to agriculture in the North-Central region of the U.S. The data is consistent with a unifying level of risk aversion. The levels of risk aversion are more plausible than previous estimates for...

Since January 2005, pensions in Slovakia are operated by a three-pillar system as proposed by the World Bank. This paper concentrates on the mandatory, fully funded second pillar. The authors present a dynamic accumulation model for determining the optimal switching strategy among pension funds...

The paper investigates risk attitudes among different types of individuals. The authors use several different measures of risk attitudes, including questions on choices between uncertain income streams suggested by Barsky et al. (1997) and a number of ad hoc measures. As in Barsky et al. (1997)...

This paper analyzes the Risk Appetite Index (RAI), a measure of investors� risk aversion proposed by Kumar and Persaud (2001, 2002). We show that the RAI distinguishes between risk and risk aversion only under theoretically restrictive assumptions on the distribution of returns and the...

Entrepreneurs often face undiversi¯able idiosyncratic risks from their business invest- ments. Motivated by this observation, we extend the standard real options approach to investment to an incomplete markets environment and analyze the joint decisions of busi- ness investments,...

This paper explores the relationship between self-declared risk aversion of private investors and their willingness to hold diversified portfolios of financial assets. The analysis is based on household survey data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) that provides a reliable measure of...

This study questions the popular stereotype that women are more risk averse than men in their financial investment decisions. The analysis is based on micro-level data from large-scale surveys of private households in five European countries. In our analysis of investment decisions, we directly...