Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Burkhard Schipper
Author-Name-First: Burkhard
Author-Name-Last: Schipper
Author-Name: Wenjun Ma
Author-Name-First: Wenjun
Author-Name-Last: Ma
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Economics, University of California Davis
Title: Does Exposure to Unawareness Affect Risk Preferences? A Preliminary Result
Abstract: One fundamental assumption often made in the literature on unawareness is that risk
 preferences are invariant to changes of awareness. We study how exposure to unawareness
 aects choices under risk. Participants in our experiment choose repeatedly between varying
 sure outcomes and a lottery in 3 phases. All treatments are exactly identical in phase
 1 and phase 3, but dier in phase 2. There are ve dierent treatments pertaining to the
 lottery faced in phase 2: The control treatment (i.e., a standard lottery), the treatment with
 awareness of unawareness of lottery outcomes but known number of outcomes, the treatment
 with awareness of unawareness of outcomes but with unknown number of outcomes,
 the treatment with unawareness of unawareness of some outcomes, and the treatment with
 an ambiguous lottery. We study both whether behavior diers in phase 3 across treatments
 (between subjects eect) and whether dierences of subjects' behavior between phases 1
 and phase 3 diers across treatments (within subject eects). We observe no signicant
 treatment eects.
Length: 33
File-URL: https://repec.dss.ucdavis.edu/files/THyDDnKvJxvyD2aSbxrrJEWo/16-2.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Number: 202
Classification-JEL: C91, C92, D81, D87
KeyWords: Unawareness, Awareness of unawareness, Risk aversion, Experiments.
Creation-Date: 20160524
Handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:202