Violence and Risk Preference: Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan
Abstract
We investigate the relationship between violence and economic risk preferences in Afghanistan combining: (i) a two-part experimental procedure identifying risk preferences, violations of Expected Utility, and specific preferences for certainty; (ii) controlled recollection of fear based on established methods from psychology; and (iii) administrative violence data from precisely geocoded military records. We document a specific preference for certainty in violation of Expected Utility. The preference for certainty, which we term a Certainty Premium, is exacerbated by the combination of violent exposure and controlled fearful recollections. The results have implications for risk taking and are potentially actionable for policymakers and marketers.
Additional Information
© 2014 American Economic Association. We are grateful for the insightful comments of many colleagues, including James Andreoni, Doug Bernheim, Eli Berman, Gordon Dahl, Colonel Joseph Felter, Radha Iyengar, Uri Gneezy, David Lake, Craig McIntosh, Christopher Woodruff, and participants of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics. We also acknowledge the generous support of the National Science Foundation grant #SES-1024683 (Sprenger) and grant #FA9550-09-1-0314 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Callen). James Long was employed by Democracy International during the implementation of this project. IRB Approval for the collection of human subjects data was approved by the University of California San Diego.Attached Files
Published - aer.104.1.123.pdf
Supplemental Material - 20120294_app.pdf
Supplemental Material - 20120294_ds.zip
Files
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 104515
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20200722-143819362
- SES-1024683
- NSF
- FA9550-09-1-0314
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
- Created
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2020-07-22Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field