Women are generally more risk averse than men. We investigated whether between- and within-gender variation in financial risk aversion was accounted for by variation in salivary concentrations of testosterone and in markers of prenatal testosterone exposure in a sample of >500 MBA students. Higher levels of circulating testosterone were associated with lower risk aversion among women, but not a...

This paper characterizes downside risk aversion in a simple and intuitive manner. The characterization highlights certain features of downside risk aversion that are common with traditional risk aversion in regards the comparative statics of risk-free wealth. Also, using this characterization one can simplify considerably a theorem by Jindapon (2010) relating to greater downside risk aversion a...

In poisoning operations, sublethal consumption of the toxin, can produce bait aversion. This decreases the effect of the poisoning and may create problems due to the presence of uneaten toxin in the environment. The use of new bait additives may prevent aversion development. Here I report the effects of two bait additives, corticosterone and mifepristone, in altering bait aversion development i...

High-dose caffeine uptake is a developmental stressor and causes food-avoidance behavior (aversion phenotype) in C. elegans, but its mode of action is largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the molecular basis of the caffeineinduced aversion behavior in C. elegans. We found that aversion phenotype induced by 30 mM caffeine was mediated by JNK/MAPK pathway, serotonergic and dopaminergic...

A body of qualitative evidence shows that loss aversion, a phenomenon formalized in prospect theory, can explain a variety of field and experimental data. Quantifications of loss aversion are, however, hindered by the absence of a general preference-based method to elicit the utility for gains and losses simultaneously. This paper proposes such a method and uses it to measure loss aversion in a...

Risk aversion is a fundamental concept in economics used to explain agents' behavior under uncertainty. Risk aversion in auctions has been justified through the many uncertainties faced by bidders and through the large value of bids relative to bidders' assets. In first-price auctions, risk aversion renders more aggress­ sive bidding, while bidding in ascending auc­ tions is not affected, leadi...

In this paper we propose the inÞmum of the Arrow-Pratt index of absolute risk aversion as a measure of global risk aversion of a utility function. We then show that, for any given arbitrary pair of distributions, there exists a threshold level of global risk aversion such that all increasing concave utility functions with at least as much global risk aversion would rank the two distributions in...

BACKGROUND Emerging data from younger and middle-aged persons suggest that cognitive ability is negatively associated with risk aversion, but this association has not been studied among older persons who are at high risk of experiencing loss of cognitive function. METHODS Using data from 369 community-dwelling older persons without dementia from the Rush Memory and Aging Project, an ongoing l...

We consider a formal approach to comparative risk aversion and applies it to intertemporal choice models. This allows us to ask whether standard classes of utility functions, such as those inspired by Kihlstrom and Mirman (1974), Selden (1978), Epstein and Zin (1989) and Quiggin (1982) are well-ordered in terms of risk aversion. Moreover, opting for this model-free approach allows us to establi...