Estimating risk preferences is tricky because controlling for confounding factors is difficult. Omitting or imperfectly controlling for these factors can attribute too much observable behavior to risk aversion and bias estimated preferences. Agents often modify risky decisions in response to...

Prospect theory has changed the way economists think about decision making under uncertainty – yet after so many years there have been few applications of the theory and those appearing mostly in finance. One of the barriers to applying the prospect theory is that it is not designed to be...

Using a unique dataset collected among farmers in India’s semi-arid tropics, this paper documents the surprising prevalence of risk-taking behavior in the face of high-stakes gambles. The evidence suggests that this apparently anomalous behavior is due to a combination of credit constraints...