Using a field experiment with high school students, we evaluate the development of risk preferences. Examining the impact of school characteristics on preference development reveals both peer and quality effects. For the peer effect, individuals in schools with a higher percentage of students on...

Experiments are being used to generate measures of characteristics of individuals that need to be controlled for economic analyses. Examples include the measurement of risk aversion, inequality aversion, and trust. Imprecision in measuring those characteristics may lead to misleading conclusions...

Holt and Laury, AER 2002, develop an experimental design to determine the risk aversion of an individual. They use their observations to argue that increased incentives appear to change risk attitudes, leading to greater risk aversion. However, their main treatment, the effects of scaling up the...