This paper investigates whether contest schemes induce excessive risk-taking by implementing in the laboratory a novel stopping task based on the contest model of Seel and Strack (2013). In this stylized setting, managers who face contest payoffs have an incentive to delay halting projects with...

In this paper it is shown that the combination of mental accounting and loss aversion can fundamentally changes people's way of evaluating risky alternatives. The observation is applied in a market setting: Parimutuel betting markets. In parimutuel betting markets it has been found that for...

This paper presents a strategic model of risk-taking behavior in contests. Formally, we analyze an n-player winner-take-all contest in which each player decides when to stop a privately observed Brownian Motion with drift. A player whose process reaches zero has to stop. The player with the...

We test for skewness preferences in a large set of observational panel data on online poker games (n=4,450,585). Each observation refers to a choice between a safe option and a binary risk of winning or losing the game. Our setting offers a real-world choice situation with substantial incentives...

Measuring risk aversion is sensitive to assumptions about the wealth in subjects' utility functions. Data from the same subjects in low- and high-stake lottery decisions allow estimating the wealth in a pre-specified one-parameter utility function simultaneously with risk aversion. This paper...

The preference reversal phenomenon is one of the most important, long-standing, and widespread anomalies contradicting economic models of decisions under risk. It describes the robust observation of frequent "standard reversals" where long-shot gambles are valued above moderate ones but then the...

Previous research suggests that human reaction to risky opportunities reflects two contradicting biases: "loss aversion", and "limited level of reasoning" that leads to overconfidence. Rejection of attractive gambles is explained by loss aversion, while counterproductive risk seeking is...