Measuring Risk Aversion on Multiple Tasks : Can Domain Specific Risk Attitudes Explain Apparently Inconsistent Behavior ? * December 2010

This paper reports the results of a study measuring risk taking behavior using multiple paid elicitation tasks. Consistent with previous puzzling results in the literature, we find considerable within subject variation in behavior across tasks. Participants also completed surveys to measure domain specific risk attitudes. A hypothesis derived from the psychology literature is that apparently inconsistent behavior can be explained by a subject’s domain specific risk attitude as measured by existing instruments. Specifically, we consider whether different elicitation tasks are tapping into different aspects of a person’s personality. The results show minimal evidence to support this explanation. JEL Codes: C9, D8

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