Previous studies have shown that other-regarding concerns are weakened under risky situations. Daily experience also suggests that people care more about an identifiable than about an unidentifiable third person. We report on an experiment designed to explore whether rendering the other...

We propose and axiomatize probability adjusted rank-discounted critical-level generalized utilitarianism (PARDCLU). We thus generalize rank-discounted utilitarianism (RDU) (proposed by Zuber and Asheim, 2012) to variable population and risky situations and thereby take important steps towards...

When individuals choose from whatever alternatives available to them the one that maximizes their utility then it is always desirable that the government provide them with as many alternatives as possible. Individuals, however, do not always choose what is best for them and their mistakes may be...

Harsanyi invested his Aggregation Theorem and Impartial Observer Theorem with utilitarian sense, but Sen described them as "representation theorems" with little ethical import. This critical view has never been subjected to full analytical scrutinity. The formal argument we provide here supports...

This paper theoretically and experimentally studies decision-making in risky and social environments. We explore the interdependence of individual risk attitudes and social preferences in form of inequality aversion as two decisive behavioral determinants in such contexts. Our model and the data...

Who is most likely to change their risk preferences over the lifecourse? Using German nationally representative survey data and methods to separate age from cohort effects, we estimate the lifecycle patterns in the socioeconomic gradient of self-reported risk preferences. Tolerance to risk drops...

Uncertainty is prevalent in the context of climate change impacts. Moreover, the distribution across the globe is not uniform. We analyze how climate risks could be reduced via an insurance scheme at the global scale across regions and quantify the potential welfare gains from such a scheme....

Who is most likely to change their risk preferences over the lifecourse? Using German nationally representative survey data and methods to separate age from cohort effects, we estimate the lifecycle patterns in the socioeconomic gradient of self-reported risk preferences. Tolerance to risk drops...

Orderings of interdependence among random variables are useful in many economic contexts, for example, in assessing ex post inequality under uncertainty; in comparing multidimensional inequality; in valuing portfolios of assets or insurance policies; and in assessing systemic risk. We explore...

Recent theoretical work in the economics of climate change has suggested that climate policy is highly sensitive to 'fat-tailed' risks of catastrophic outcomes (Weitzman, 2009). Such risks are suggested to be an inevitable consequence of scientific uncertainty about the effects of increased...