scholarly journals Heterogeneity in Risky Choice Behavior in a Broad Population

2011 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 664-694 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Martin von Gaudecker ◽  
Arthur van Soest ◽  
Erik WengstrÖm

We analyze risk preferences using an experiment with real incentives in a representative sample of 1,422 Dutch respondents. Our econometric model incorporates four structural parameters that vary with observed and unobserved characteristics: utility curvature, loss aversion, preferences toward the timing of uncertainty resolution, and the propensity to choose randomly rather than on the basis of preferences. We find that all four parameters contribute to explaining choice behavior. The structural parameters are significantly associated with socioeconomic variables, but it is essential to incorporate unobserved heterogeneity in each of them to match the rich variety of choice patterns in the data. (JEL D12, D81)

2013 ◽  
Vol 103 (6) ◽  
pp. 2499-2529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Levon Barseghyan ◽  
Francesca Molinari ◽  
Ted O'Donoghue ◽  
Joshua C Teitelbaum

We use data on insurance deductible choices to estimate a structural model of risky choice that incorporates “standard” risk aversion (diminishing marginal utility for wealth) and probability distortions. We find that probability distortions—characterized by substantial overweighting of small probabilities and only mild insensitivity to probability changes—play an important role in explaining the aversion to risk manifested in deductible choices. This finding is robust to allowing for observed and unobserved heterogeneity in preferences. We demonstrate that neither Kőszegi-Rabin loss aversion alone nor Gul disappointment aversion alone can explain our estimated probability distortions, signifying a key role for probability weighting. (JEL D14, D81, G22)


Author(s):  
Travis D. Stimeling

This chapter offers a historiographic survey of country music scholarship from the publication of Bill C. Malone’s “A History of Commercial Country Music in the United States, 1920–1964” (1965) to the leading publications of the today. Very little of substance has been written on country music recorded since the 1970s, especially when compared to the wealth of available literature on early country recording artists. Ethnographic studies of country music and country music culture are rare, and including ethnographic methods in country music studies offers new insights into the rich variety of ways in which people make, consume, and engage with country music as a genre. The chapter traces the influence of folklore studies, sociology, cultural studies, and musicology on the development of country music studies and proposes some directions for future research in the field.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104346312199408
Author(s):  
Carlo Barone ◽  
Katherin Barg ◽  
Mathieu Ichou

This work examines the validity of the two main assumptions of relative risk-aversion models of educational inequality. We compare the Breen-Goldthorpe (BG) and the Breen-Yaish (BY) models in terms of their assumptions about status maintenance motives and beliefs about the occupational risks associated with educational decisions. Concerning the first assumption, our contribution is threefold. First, we criticise the assumption of the BG model that families aim only at avoiding downward mobility and are insensitive to the prospects of upward mobility. We argue that the loss-aversion assumption proposed by BY is a more realistic formulation of status-maintenance motives. Second, we propose and implement a novel empirical approach to assess the validity of the loss-aversion assumption. Third, we present empirical results based on a sample of families of lower secondary school leavers indicating that families are sensitive to the prospects of both upward and downward mobility, and that the loss-aversion hypothesis of BY is empirically supported. As regards the risky choice assumption, we argue that families may not believe that more ambitious educational options entail occupational risks relative to less ambitious ones. We present empirical evidence indicating that, in France, the academic path is not perceived as a risky option. We conclude that, if the restrictive assumptions of the BG model are removed, relative-risk aversion needs not drive educational inequalities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-233
Author(s):  
Jiaxing Jiang ◽  
Jingyuan Zhang

Emotion, as a classic topic in psychological studies, has been intensively investigated by scholars across disciplines. In discursive psychology, emotion discourse refers to the rich variety and situated uses of emotion words and metaphors. Many studies of emotion in discursive psychology focus on the rhetorical contrasts of emotion. Conceptual analysis is another significant part of emotion discourse, and one that requires further investigation. To reveal how people describe and evoke emotions in discourse, this article starts with a reinterpretation of emotion in discursive psychology, followed by setting up an emotion system from a systemic functional perspective to illustrate how conceptual analysis may be conducted and rhetorical contrasts explored. During the process of establishing the emotion system, the paper elaborates upon the emotion concept and rhetorical contrasts on the basis of four illustrative examples taken from authentic extracts (including news and testimonies). The paper discusses the purpose behind the construction of the emotion system in terms of (1) the constituents in conceptual analysis and rhetorical contrasts of discursive psychology from a functional perspective, (2) the collaboration between conceptual analysis and rhetorical contrasts, (3) the traits of the emotion system as a method of discursive psychology analysis.


Though the existence of Jewish regional cultures is widely known, the origins of the most prominent groups, Ashkenaz and Sepharad, are poorly understood, and the rich variety of other regional Jewish identities is often overlooked. Yet all these subcultures emerged in the Middle Ages. Scholars contributing to the present study were invited to consider how such regional identities were fashioned, propagated, reinforced, contested, and reshaped — and to reflect on the developments, events, or encounters that made these identities manifest. They were asked to identify how subcultural identities proved to be useful, and the circumstances in which they were deployed. The resulting volume spans the ninth to sixteenth centuries, and explores Jewish cultural developments in western Europe, the Balkans, North Africa, and Asia Minor. In its own way, each chapter considers factors — demographic, geographical, historical, economic, political, institutional, legal, intellectual, theological, cultural, and even biological — that led medieval Jews to conceive of themselves, or to be perceived by others, as bearers of a discrete Jewish regional identity. Notwithstanding the singularity of each chapter, they collectively attest to the inherent dynamism of Jewish regional identities.


Author(s):  
Ka Hong ◽  
Elena Solana ◽  
Mauro Coduri ◽  
Clemens Ritter ◽  
Paul Attfield

Abstract A new CaFe3O5-type phase NiFe3O5 (orthorhombic Cmcm symmetry, cell parameters a = 2.89126(7), b = 9.71988(21) and c = 12.52694(27) Å) has been synthesised under pressures of 12-13 GPa at 1200 °C. NiFe3O5 has an inverse cation site distribution and reveals an interesting evolution from M2+(Fe3+ )2Fe2+O5 to Fe2+(M2+ 0.5Fe3+ 0.5)2Fe3+O5 distributions over three distinct cation sites as M2+ cation size decreases from Ca to Ni. Magnetic susceptibility measurements show successive transitions at 275, ~150, and ~20 K and neutron diffraction data reveal a series of at least three spin-ordered phases with evolving propagation vectors k = [0 0 0] [0 ky 0]  [½ ½ 0] on cooling. The rich variety of magnetically ordered phases in NiFe3O5 likely results from frustration of Goodenough-Kanamori exchange interactions between the three spin sublattices, and further interesting magnetic materials are expected to be accessible within the CaFe3O5-type family.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thorsten Pachur ◽  
Michael Schulte-Mecklenbeck

There is a disconnect in the literature between analyses of risky choice based on cumulativeprospect theory (CPT) and work on predecisional information processing. One likely reason is that for expectation models (e.g., CPT) it is often assumed that people only behaved as if they conducted the computations leading to the predicted choice, and that the models are thus mute with regard to information processing. We suggest that key psychological constructs in CPT, such as loss aversion and outcome and probability sensitivity, can be interpreted in terms of attention allocation. In two experiments, we tested hypotheses about specific links between CPT parameters and attentional regularities. Experiment 1 used process tracing to monitor participants’ predecisional attention allocation to outcome and probability information. As hypothesized, individual differences in CPT’s loss-aversion, outcome-sensitivity, and probability-sensitivity parameters (estimated from participants’ choices) were systematically associated with individual differences in attention allocation to outcome and probability information. For instance, loss aversion was associated with the relative attention allocated to loss and gain outcomes, and a more strongly curved weighting function was associated with less attention allocated to probabilities. Experiment 2 manipulated participants’ attention to losses or gains, causing systematic differences in CPT’s loss aversion parameter. This result indicates that attention allocation can to some extent cause choice regularities that are captured by CPT. Our findings demonstrate an “as-if” model’s capacity to reflect characteristics of information processing. We suggest that the observed CPT–attention links can be harnessed to inform the development of process models of risky choice.


Author(s):  
Vera Boneva

The article systematizes information about the current cultural heritage programs in the Bulgarian higher education area. The data shows that in eleven Bulgarian universities a diploma of cultural heritage can be obtained. 17 master's and 3 bachelor's programs prepare over 500 students a year. Two doctoral programs are also accredited. The rich variety of curricula is an objective result of the complex structure of cultural heritage in itself. However, it is also an indicator for the fragmentation of the higher education system in Bulgaria. The conclusion proposes approaches to overcoming the mentioned fragmentation, as the interdisciplinarity of the scientific field requires pooling of competencies and efforts for better results.


1982 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Payne ◽  
Dan J. Laughhunn ◽  
Roy Crum
Keyword(s):  

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