Responsibility Effects in Decision Making under Risk

We systematically explore decision situations in which a decision maker bears responsibility for somebody else's outcomes as well as for her own in situations of payoff equality. In the gain domain we confirm the intuition that being responsible for somebody else's payoffs increases risk aversion. This is however not attributable to a 'cautious shift' as often thought. Indeed, looking at risk attitudes in the loss domain, we find an increase in risk seeking under responsibility. This raises issues about the nature of various decision biases under risk, and to what extent changed behavior under responsibility may depend on a social norm of caution in situations of responsibility versus naive corrections from perceived biases. To further explore this issue, we designed a second experiment to explore risk-taking behavior for gain prospects offering very small or very large probabilities of winning. For large probabilities, we find increased risk aversion, thus confirming our earlier finding. For small probabilities however, we find an increase of risk seeking under conditions of responsibility. The latter finding thus discredits hypotheses of a social rule dictating caution under responsibility, and can be explained through flexible self-correction models predicting an accentuation of the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes predicted by prospect theory. An additional accountability mechanism does not change risk behavior, except for mixed prospects, in which it reduces loss aversion. This indicates that loss aversion is of a fundamentally different nature than probability weighting or utility curvature. Implications for debiasing are discussed

An Experimental Test of Precautionary Bidding

Auctions often involve goods exhibiting a common knowledge ex-post risk that is independent of buyers’ private values or their signals regarding common value components. Esö and White (2004) showed theoretically that ex-post risk leads to precautionary bidding for DARA bidders: Agents reduce their bids by more than their appropriate risk premium. Testing precautionary bidding with data from the field seems almost impossible. We conduct experimental first-price auctions that allow us to directly identify the precautionary premium and find clear evidence for precautionary bidding. Bidders are significantly better off when a risky object rather than an equally valued sure object is auctioned. Our results are robust if we control for potentially confounding decision biases

Tempus Fugit: Time Pressure in Risky Decisions

We study the effects of time pressure on risky decisions for pure gain prospects, pure loss prospects, and mixed prospects involving both gains and losses. In an experiment we find that risk aversion for gains is robust under time pressure whereas risk seeking for losses turns into risk aversion under time pressure. For mixed prospects, subjects become more loss averse and more gain seeking under time pressure, depending on the framing of the prospects. The results suggest the importance of aspiration levels under time pressure. We discuss the implications of our findings for decision making situations that involve time pressure

Responsibility Effects in Decision Making under Risk

We systematically explore decision situations in which a decision maker bears responsibility for somebody else's outcomes as well as for her own in situations of payoff equality. In the gain domain we confirm the intuition that being responsible for somebody else's payoffs increases risk aversion. This is however not attributable to a 'cautious shift' as often thought. Indeed, looking at risk attitudes in the loss domain, we find an increase in risk seeking under responsibility. This raises issues about the nature of various decision biases under risk, and to what extent changed behavior under responsibility may depend on a social norm of caution in situations of responsibility versus naive corrections from perceived biases. To further explore this issue, we designed a second experiment to explore risk-taking behavior for gain prospects offering very small or very large probabilities of winning. For large probabilities, we find increased risk aversion, thus confirming our earlier finding. For small probabilities however, we find an increase of risk seeking under conditions of responsibility. The latter finding thus discredits hypotheses of a social rule dictating caution under responsibility, and can be explained through flexible self-correction models predicting an accentuation of the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes predicted by prospect theory. An additional accountability mechanism does not change risk behavior, except for mixed prospects, in which it reduces loss aversion. This indicates that loss aversion is of a fundamentally different nature than probability weighting or utility curvature. Implications for debiasing are discussed.risk attitude; other-regarding preferences; prospect theory; agency; social norms

An Experimental Test of Precautionary Bidding

Auctions often involve goods exhibiting a common knowledge ex-post risk that is independent of buyers’ private values or their signals regarding common value components. Esö and White (2004) showed theoretically that ex-post risk leads to precautionary bidding for DARA bidders: Agents reduce their bids by more than their appropriate risk premium. Testing precautionary bidding with data from the field seems almost impossible. We conduct experimental first-price auctions that allow us to directly identify the precautionary premium and find clear evidence for precautionary bidding. Bidders are significantly better off when a risky object rather than an equally valued sure object is auctioned. Our results are robust if we control for potentially confounding decision biases.precautionary bidding; prudence; auction; experiment

Tempus Fugit: Time Pressure in Risky Decisions

We study the effects of time pressure on risky decisions for pure gain prospects, pure loss prospects, and mixed prospects involving both gains and losses. In an experiment we find that risk aversion for gains is robust under time pressure whereas risk seeking for losses turns into risk aversion under time pressure. For mixed prospects, subjects become more loss averse and more gain seeking under time pressure, depending on the framing of the prospects. The results suggest the importance of aspiration levels under time pressure. We discuss the implications of our findings for decision making situations that involve time pressure.time pressure; risky decisions; risk aversion; loss aversion; gain seeking; aspiration level