This paper defines local aversion to a risk index. I show that the local aversion to the Aumann and Serrano [2008] index of riskiness coincides with absolute risk aversion, and that the same applies for the Foster and Hart [2009] measure of riskiness. Using this “local consistency” I offer a new approach for axiomatizing the Aumann and Serrano index of riskiness and present other applications o...

W propose that ambiguity aversion, as introduced in the literature on decision making under uncertainty, drives a preference for established brands in multiattribute choices among branded alternatives. Established brands are those for which belief in quality is held with greater confidence, even if specific attributes might be inferior to those of competing, less-established brands. In five exp...

Recent research has identified specific disorders that appear to be better characterized by the experience of aversion, rather than anxiety, which evolve from disgust-related affect. Three mathematically distinct taxometric procedures--MAXEIG, MAMBAC, and L-Mode--were applied to data from a large undiagnosed sample (N=909) to determine whether aversion forms a distinct psychopathological catego...

This paper discusses the sensitivity of the value of information to the risk aversion in two-action decision problems when the initial wealth is uncertain. We demonstrate that there is no general monotonicity between information value and the Arrow–Pratt risk aversion in this setting. We then show that monotonicity exists in the sense of Rubinstein’s measure of risk aversion when the lottery is...

Expected utility functions are limited to second-order (conditional) risk aversion, while non-expected utility functions can exhibit either …rst-order or second-order (conditional) risk aversion. We extend the concept of orders of conditional risk aversion to orders of conditional dependent risk aversion. We show that …rst-order conditional dependent risk aversion is consistent with the framewo...

Different models of capital exchange among economic agents have been proposed recently trying to explain the emergence of Pareto’s wealth power law distribution. One important factor to be considered is the existence of risk aversion. In this paper we study a model where agents posses different levels of risk aversion, going from uniform to a random distribution. In all cases the risk aversion ...

Risk aversion is a key element of utility maximizing hedge strategies; however, it has typically been assigned an arbitrary value in the literature. This paper instead applies a GARCH-in-Mean (GARCH-M) model to estimate a time-varying measure of risk aversion that is based on the observed risk preferences of energy hedging market participants. The resulting estimates are applied to derive expli...

We investigate a representative agent consumption-based asset pricing model with two states: low risk aversion and high risk aversion. We explore whether there is a reasonable parameterization capable of generating the empirically observed seasonally-varying equity and Treasury returns documented by Kamstra, Kramer, and Levi (2008). Calibrating the asset-pricing model to observed consumption da...

This paper examines how aversion to risk and aversion to intertemporal substitution determine the strength of the precautionary saving motive in a two-period model with Selden/Kreps-Porteus preferences. For small risks, we derive a measure of the strength of the precautionary saving motive which generalizes the concept of "prudence" introduced by Kimball (1990b). For large risks, we show that d...