We study a two-stage R&D project with an abandonment option. Two types of uncertainty influence the decision to start R&D. Demand uncertainty is modelled as a lottery between a proportional increase and decrease in demand. Technical uncertainty is modelled as a lottery between a decrease and...

We relate an observed difference between single men (SM) and single women (SW) in attitudes towards risk to the higher value assigned to social status by SM than by SW. In the marriage market, low status carries a harsher penalty for SM than for SW because when selecting a partner, the social...

We investigate the impact of self-organized reputation versus certification by an independent institution on demand for online shops. Using data from a large Austrian price comparison site, we show that quality seals issued by a credible and independent institution increase demand more than...

We examine the relationship between confidence in own absolute performance and risk attitudes using two elicitation procedures: self-reported (non-incentivised) confidence and an incentivised procedure that elicits the certainty equivalent of a bet based on performance. The former procedure...

Agencies charged with regulating complex risks such as food safety or novel substances frequently need to take decisions on risk assessment and risk management under conditions of ambiguity, i.e. where probabilities cannot be assigned to possible outcomes of regulatory actions. What mandates...

The origin of prospect theory is the desire to test the intuitive statistician in the real world. The development of this theory by the cognitive psychologists Kahneman and Tversky can be traced to the former's work in cognitive psychophysics, in which deviations from average behavior are termed...

To contribute to a scarce literature, in particular for developing and emerging economies, we study the nature of measured risk attitudes and their consequences for migration. We also investigate whether substantial changes in the risk environment influences risk tolerance. Using the 2009 RUMiC...

Why do entrepreneurship rates differ so markedly by gender? Using data from a large, representative German household panel, we investigate to what extent personality traits, human capital, and the employment history influence the start-up decision and can explain the gender gap in...

The standard expected utility model of tax evasion predicts that evasion is decreasing in the marginal tax rate (the Yitzhaki puzzle). The existing literature disagrees on whether prospect theory overturns the puzzle. We disentangle four distinct elements of prospect theory and find loss...

A core prediction of recent "dual-self" models is that a person's risk attitudes depend on her current level of self-control. While these models have received a lot of attention, empirical studies tailored to testing their core prediction are lacking. Using two prominent models, we derive...