IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/rqfnac/v39y2012i4p471-484.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Time-inconsistent risk preferences in a laboratory experiment

Author

Listed:
  • K. Ko
  • Zhijian Huang

Abstract

We conduct an experiment to explore the time-consistency of risk preferences in a multi-period betting game. Specifically, subjects planned their contingent betting decisions in advance then played the game dynamically later to determine whether their respective decisions matched. We find that subjects took more risk than planned in their initial bet and after losses. In addition, this increased risk was associated with an increase in breakeven mental accounting. Our findings indicate that immediacy of outcomes can lead to impulsive risk-taking behavior and highlight the importance of precommitment to long-term financial planning. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Suggested Citation

  • K. Ko & Zhijian Huang, 2012. "Time-inconsistent risk preferences in a laboratory experiment," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 471-484, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:rqfnac:v:39:y:2012:i:4:p:471-484
    DOI: 10.1007/s11156-011-0264-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11156-011-0264-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11156-011-0264-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George Loewenstein & Ted O'Donoghue & Matthew Rabin, 2003. "Projection Bias in Predicting Future Utility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(4), pages 1209-1248.
    2. Levy, Haim, 1994. "Absolute and Relative Risk Aversion: An Experimental Study," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 289-307, May.
    3. Manel Baucells & Franz H. Heukamp, 2012. "Probability and Time Trade-Off," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(4), pages 831-842, April.
    4. Uri Gneezy & Jan Potters, 1997. "An Experiment on Risk Taking and Evaluation Periods," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 631-645.
    5. Keren, Gideon & Roelofsma, Peter, 1995. "Immediacy and Certainty in Intertemporal Choice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 287-297, September.
    6. Richard H. Thaler & Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman & Alan Schwartz, 1997. "The Effect of Myopia and Loss Aversion on Risk Taking: An Experimental Test," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 647-661.
    7. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Lutz Hahnenstein & Klaus Röder, 2007. "Who hedges more when leverage is endogenous? A testable theory of corporate risk management under general distributional conditions," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 28(4), pages 353-391, May.
    9. Charles Noussair & Ping Wu, 2006. "Risk tolerance in the present and the future: an experimental study," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(6), pages 401-412.
    10. Nicholas C. Barberis, 2009. "A Model of Casino Gambling," NBER Working Papers 14947, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Milevsky, Moshe Arye, 1999. "Time Diversification, Safety-First and Risk," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 271-281, May.
    12. Richard H. Thaler & Eric J. Johnson, 1990. "Gambling with the House Money and Trying to Break Even: The Effects of Prior Outcomes on Risky Choice," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(6), pages 643-660, June.
    13. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:5:p:1775-1798 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mousumi Singha Mahapatra & Jayasree Raveendran & Anupam De, 2019. "Building a Model on Influence of Behavioural and Cognitive Factors on Personal Financial Planning: A Study Among Indian Households," Global Business Review, International Management Institute, vol. 20(4), pages 996-1009, August.
    2. P. A. Forsyth & K. R. Vetzal, 2017. "Robust Asset Allocation For Long-Term Target-Based Investing," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(03), pages 1-32, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas Epper & Helga Fehr-Duda, 2012. "The missing link: unifying risk taking and time discounting," ECON - Working Papers 096, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Oct 2018.
    2. Neszveda, G., 2019. "Essays on behavioral finance," Other publications TiSEM 05059039-5236-42a3-be1b-3, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Brocas, Isabelle & Carrillo, Juan D. & Giga, Aleksandar & Zapatero, Fernando, 2019. "Risk Aversion in a Dynamic Asset Allocation Experiment," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 54(5), pages 2209-2232, October.
    4. Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe & Giovanni Ponti & Josefa Tomás, 2016. "Myopic Loss Aversion under Ambiguity and Gender Effects," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(12), pages 1-11, December.
    5. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten, 2017. "On the applicability of maximum likelihood methods: From experimental to financial data," SAFE Working Paper Series 148, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2017.
    6. Epper, Thomas & Fehr-Duda, Helga, 2017. "A Tale of Two Tails: On the Coexistence of Overweighting and Underweighting of Rare Extreme Events," Economics Working Paper Series 1705, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    7. Plamen Nikolov, 2018. "Time Delay and Investment Decisions: Evidence from An Experiment in Tanzania," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(2), pages 1124-1137.
    8. Hopfensitz, Astrid, 2009. "Previous outcomes and reference dependence: A meta study of repeated investment tasks with and without restricted feedback," MPRA Paper 16096, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Gerlinde Fellner & Matthias Sutter, 2009. "Causes, Consequences, and Cures of Myopic Loss Aversion – An Experimental Investigation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(537), pages 900-916, April.
    10. Jeeva Somasundaram & Vincent Eli, 2022. "Risk and time preferences interaction: An experimental measurement," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 65(2), pages 215-238, October.
    11. Emily Haisley & Romel Mostafa & George Loewenstein, 2008. "Myopic risk-seeking: The impact of narrow decision bracketing on lottery play," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 57-75, August.
    12. Glätzle-Rützler, Daniela & Sutter, Matthias & Zeileis, Achim, 2015. "No myopic loss aversion in adolescents? – An experimental note," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 169-176.
    13. Uri Gneezy & Arie Kapteyn & Jan Potters, 2003. "Evaluation Periods and Asset Prices in a Market Experiment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(2), pages 821-838, April.
    14. Anderson, Anders E. S., 2004. "One for the Gain, Three for the Loss," SIFR Research Report Series 20, Institute for Financial Research.
    15. Lipman, Stefan A. & Brouwer, Werner B.F. & Attema, Arthur E., 2020. "Living up to expectations: Experimental tests of subjective life expectancy as reference point in time trade-off and standard gamble," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    16. Enrique Fatás & Francisca Jiménez & Antonio Morales, 2011. "Controlling for initial endowment and experience in binary choice tasks," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 227-243, December.
    17. Hopfensitz, Astrid, 2009. "Previous Outcomes and Reference Dependence: A Meta Study of Repeated Investment Tasks with Restricted Feedback," TSE Working Papers 09-087, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    18. Jinrui Pan & Craig S. Webb & Horst Zank, 2019. "Delayed probabilistic risk attitude: a parametric approach," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(2), pages 201-232, September.
    19. Arpan Jani, 2021. "An agent-based model of repeated decision making under risk: modeling the role of alternate reference points and risk behavior on long-run outcomes," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 91(9), pages 1271-1297, November.
    20. Nicholas Barberis & Ming Huang, 2006. "The Loss Aversion / Narrow Framing Approach to the Equity Premium Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 12378, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Experimental economics; Time inconsistency; Risk preference; Mental accounting; Behavioral finance; C91; D81; G14;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:rqfnac:v:39:y:2012:i:4:p:471-484. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.