IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cmf/wpaper/wp2007_0706.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Economic Index of Riskiness

Author

Listed:
  • Robert J. Aumann
  • Roberto Serrano

Abstract

Define the riskiness of a gamble as the reciprocal of the absolute risk aversion (ARA) of an individual with constant ARA who is indifferent between taking and not taking that gamble. We characterize this index by axioms, chief among them a “duality” axiom which, roughly speaking, asserts that less risk-averse individuals accept riskier gambles. The index is positively homogeneous, continuous, and subadditive, respects first and second order stochastic dominance, and for normally distributed gambles, is half of variance/mean. Examples are calculated, additional properties derived, and the index is compared with others.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert J. Aumann & Roberto Serrano, 2007. "An Economic Index of Riskiness," Working Papers wp2007_0706, CEMFI.
    • Handle: RePEc:cmf:wpaper:wp2007_0706
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cemfi.es/ftp/wp/0706.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fishburn, Peter C, 1977. "Mean-Risk Analysis with Risk Associated with Below-Target Returns," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(2), pages 116-126, March.
    2. Diamond, Peter A. & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1974. "Increases in risk and in risk aversion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 337-360, July.
    3. Matthew Rabin, 2000. "Risk Aversion and Expected-Utility Theory: A Calibration Theorem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1281-1292, September.
    4. Palacios-Huerta, Ignacio & Serrano, Roberto, 2006. "Rejecting small gambles under expected utility," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 250-259, May.
    5. G. Hanoch & H. Levy, 1969. "The Efficiency Analysis of Choices Involving Risk," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 36(3), pages 335-346.
    6. Philippe Artzner & Freddy Delbaen & Jean‐Marc Eber & David Heath, 1999. "Coherent Measures of Risk," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 203-228, July.
    7. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1970. "Increasing risk: I. A definition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 225-243, September.
    8. Jianmin Jia & James S. Dyer & John C. Butler, 1999. "Measures of Perceived Risk," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(4), pages 519-532, April.
    9. Hadar, Josef & Russell, William R, 1969. "Rules for Ordering Uncertain Prospects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 25-34, March.
    10. Levy, Haim & Hanoch, Giora, 1970. "Relative Effectiveness of Efficiency Criteria for Portfolio Selection," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 63-76, March.
    11. Peter C. Fishburn, 1984. "Foundations of Risk Measurement. I. Risk As Probable Loss," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(4), pages 396-406, April.
    12. Aumann, Robert J & Kurz, Mordecai, 1977. "Power and Taxes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(5), pages 1137-1161, July.
    13. James Tobin, 1969. "Comment on Borch and Feldstein," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 36(1), pages 13-14.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Turan G. Bali & Nusret Cakici & Fousseni Chabi-Yo, 2011. "A Generalized Measure of Riskiness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(8), pages 1406-1423, August.
    2. Caporin, Massimiliano & Costola, Michele & Jannin, Gregory & Maillet, Bertrand, 2018. "“On the (Ab)use of Omega?”," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 11-33.
    3. Kaplanski, Guy & Kroll, Yoram, 2002. "VaR Risk Measures versus Traditional Risk Measures: an Analysis and Survey," MPRA Paper 80070, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Unser, Matthias, 2000. "Lower partial moments as measures of perceived risk: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 253-280, June.
    5. Courtois, Olivier Le & Xu, Xia, 2023. "Semivariance below the maximum: Assessing the performance of economic and financial prospects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 185-199.
    6. Casper G. de Vries & Mandira Sarma & Bjørn N. Jorgensen & Jean-Pierre Zigrand & Jon Danielsson, 2006. "Consistent Measures of Risk," FMG Discussion Papers dp565, Financial Markets Group.
    7. Heller, Yuval & Schreiber, Amnon, 2020. "Short-term investments and indices of risk," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(3), July.
    8. Chateauneuf, Alain & Cohen, Michele & Meilijson, Isaac, 2004. "Four notions of mean-preserving increase in risk, risk attitudes and applications to the rank-dependent expected utility model," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 547-571, August.
    9. Doron Nisani, 2023. "On the General Deviation Measure and the Gini coefficient," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 19(3), pages 599-610, September.
    10. Kilian, Lutz & Manganelli, Simone, 2003. "The central bank as a risk manager: quantifying and forecasting inflation risks," Working Paper Series 226, European Central Bank.
    11. W. Wong & R. Chan, 2008. "Prospect and Markowitz stochastic dominance," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 105-129, January.
    12. Grant, Simon & Quiggin, John, 2005. "Increasing uncertainty: a definition," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 117-141, March.
    13. Merton, Robert, 1990. "Capital market theory and the pricing of financial securities," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: B. M. Friedman & F. H. Hahn (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 11, pages 497-581, Elsevier.
    14. Bertrand, Philippe & Prigent, Jean-luc, 2011. "Omega performance measure and portfolio insurance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 1811-1823, July.
    15. Guo, Dongmei & Hu, Yi & Wang, Shouyang & Zhao, Lin, 2016. "Comparing risks with reference points: A stochastic dominance approach," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 105-116.
    16. Daskalaki, Charoula & Skiadopoulos, George & Topaloglou, Nikolas, 2017. "Diversification benefits of commodities: A stochastic dominance efficiency approach," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 250-269.
    17. Sudhir A. Shah, 2010. "Comparative Riskiness Of Random Vector Outcomes," Working papers 191, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    18. Simon Dietz & Nicoleta Anca Matei, 2016. "Spaces for Agreement: A Theory of Time-Stochastic Dominance and an Application to Climate Change," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 85-130.
    19. Levy, Haim & Levy, Moshe, 2009. "The safety first expected utility model: Experimental evidence and economic implications," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1494-1506, August.
    20. Cillo, Alessandra & Delquié, Philippe, 2014. "Mean-risk analysis with enhanced behavioral content," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 239(3), pages 764-775.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C00 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - General
    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • D00 - Microeconomics - - General - - - General
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G00 - Financial Economics - - General - - - General

    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:cmf:wpaper:wp2007_0706. 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: Araceli Requerey (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cemfies.html .

    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.