From the stated price of a specified lottery in three unrelated surveys we deduce individuals' Arrow-Pratt measure of risk aversion. We find that risk aversion indeed falls with income and wealth. Entrepreneurs are less risk averse than employees, civil servants are more risk averse than private...

We replicate Shaw (1996) who found that individual wage growth is higher for individuals with greater preference for risk taking. Expanding her dataset with more American observations and data for Germany, Spain and Italy, we find mixed support for the earlier results. We present and estimate a...

We develop a simple human capital model for optimum schooling length when earnings are stochastic, and highlight the pivotal role of risk attitudes and the schooling gradient of earnings risk. We use Spanish data to document the gradient and to estimate individual response to earnings risk in...

The risk of investment in schooling has largely been ignored. We assess thevariance in the rate of return by surveying the international empirical literature from this freshperspective and by simulating risky earnings profiles in alternative options. choosingparameters on basis of the very...

In this paper we test for risk compensation in wages using Danish panel data. With the conviction that the type of education is as important as the education length, we use a very detailed description of the type of education reached by the Danish population to calculate different measures of...

We develop a simple human capital model for optimum schooling length when earnings are stochastic, and highlight the pivotal role of risk attitudes and the schooling gradient of earnings risk. We use Spanish data to document the gradient and to estimate individual response to earnings risk in...

We use a unique data set about the wage distribution that Swiss students expect for themselves ex ante, deriving parametric and non-parametric measures to capture expected wage risk. These wage risk measures are unfettered by heterogeneity which handicapped the use of actual market wage...

There is no robust empirical support for the effect of financial incentives on the decision to work in self-employment rather than as a wage earner. In the literature, this is seen as a puzzle. We offer a focus on the opportunity cost, i.e. the wages given up as an employee. Information on...