Bougherara, Douadia, Friesen, Lana and Nauges, Céline (2022) Risk-Taking and Skewness-Seeking Behavior in a Demographically Diverse Population. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, vol.201. pp. 83-104.

Preview

Text Download (705kB) | Preview

Abstract

We study the interaction between risk-taking and skewness-seeking behavior among a demographically diverse sample of French adults using an experiment that elicits certainty equivalent over lotteries that vary the second and third moments orthogonally. We find that the most common behavior is risk avoidance and skewness seeking. On average, we find no interaction between the two, and a weakly significant interaction only in some segments of the population. That is, in most cases, skewness seeking is not affected by the variance of the lotteries involved, nor is risk taking affected by the skewness of the lotteries. We also find a significant positive correlation between risk-avoiding and skewness-seeking behavior. Older and female participants make more risk-avoiding and more skewness-seeking choices, while less educated people and those not in executive occupations are more skewness seeking. Estimated decision models show that utility curvature, likelihood sensitivity, and optimism can explain the observed behaviors.

Available Versions of this Item

• Risk taking and skewness seeking behavior in a demographically diverse population. (deposited 25 Nov 2021 15:54)
  • Risk-Taking and Skewness-Seeking Behavior in a Demographically Diverse Population. (deposited 30 Aug 2022 13:05) [Currently Displayed]