Frontal lobe dysfunction may underlie excessively impulsive and risky behavior observed in a range of neurological disorders. We devised a gambling task to examine these behavior tendencies in a sample of patients who had sustained focal damage to the frontal lobes or nonfrontal cortical regions as well as in a matched sample of healthy control subjects. The main objectives of the study were: (...

The decision to undertake risk is often made in groups, while much of the economics literature on risk taking focuses on the individual. We report the results of controlled laboratory experiments that compare behavior between individuals and pairs. Using the Holt and Laury (2002) procedure and a within–subject design, we find no evidence of group polarization, but do find significant ordering e...

This study reports on five experiments that investigate professional corporate managers’ risky behavior across decision settings in which various forms of financial data are evaluated. Specifically, managers decisions to take or avoid risk are investigated when evaluating data in the form of profits, losses, revenues, costs, and expenditures. The results indicate that, with one exception (i.e.,...

Objectives: The aim of this study is to assess the association between early menarche and risk-taking behavior in a representative sample of Korean adolescent students. Methods: Data were drawn from cross-sectional, national and representative sample of 33,829 female adolescents (grades 7–12) based on the 2014 Korean Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey. Logistic regression analysis was conduct...

Adolescents engage in a wide range of risky behaviors that their older peers shun, and at an enormous cost. Despite being older, stronger, and healthier than children, adolescents face twice the risk of mortality and morbidity faced by their younger peers. Are adolescents really risk-seekers or does some richer underlying preference drive their love of the uncertain? To answer that question, we...

BACKGROUND Among older people, undue risk taking could lead to falls, irrespective of physical ability. We investigated the interaction between risk-taking behavior and physical ability and its contribution to falls. METHODS Participants (N = 294, age ≥ 70) were asked to walk as quickly as possible to a visible destination by choosing one of six paths. Each contained a raised plank that had t...

This study examined the gambling of a cohort of U.S. Air Force recruits (N = 31,104) and the relationship between their gambling and health-risk behaviors. Participants provided self-report data regarding gambling and health-related behaviors. Results suggest that 10.4% of participants gambled weekly or more often, 6.2% reported gambling problems, and 1.9% acknowledged loss of control over gamb...

Huntington's disease (HD) is a genetic, neurodegenerative disorder, which specifically affects striatal neurons of the indirect pathway, resulting in a progressive decline in muscle coordination and loss of emotional and cognitive control. Interestingly, predisposition to pathological gambling and other addictions involves disturbances in the same cortico-striatal circuits that are affected in ...

I study managers' risk-taking behavior and how it is affected by equity-based compensation. I find that in response to an exogenous increase in takeover protection in Delaware during the mid-1990s, managers lower firm risk by 5%. I also find that the decrease in firm risk is concentrated among firms with low managerial equity-based incentives. In particular, firms with low CEO portfolio sensiti...