1. The missing link: Unifying risk taking and time discounting
- Author
-
Epper, Thomas, Fehr-Duda, Helga, and University of Zurich
- Subjects
jel:D81 ,risk taking ,jel:D01 ,Zeitpräferenz ,ECON Department of Economics ,increasing risk tolerance ,10007 Department of Economics ,Entscheidungsfindung ,ddc:330 ,D91 ,Risiko ,Risk taking ,preference for one-shot resolution of uncertainty ,jel:D91 ,decreasing impatience ,shot resolution of uncertainty ,Risikopräferenz ,330 Economics ,D81 ,Entscheidung bei Risiko ,Entscheidung bei Unsicherheit ,preference for late resolution of uncertainty ,Risk taking, time discounting, probability weighting, decreasing impatience, increasing risk tolerance, preference for late resolution of uncertainty, preference for one-shot resolution of uncertainty ,D01 ,preference for one ,Risikobereitschaft ,probability weighting ,Theorie ,time discounting - Abstract
Almost all important decisions in people's lives entail risky and delayed consequences. Regardless of whether we make choices involving health, wealth, love or education, almost every choice involves costs and benefits that are uncertain and materialize over time. Because risk and delay often arise simultaneously, theories of decision making should be capable of explaining how behavior under risk and over time interacts. There is, in fact, a growing body of evidence indicating important interactions between behaviorally revealed risk tolerance and patience. Risk taking behavior is delay dependent, and time discounting is risk dependent. Here we show that the inherent uncertainty of future events conjointly with people's proneness to weight probabilities nonlinearly generates a unifying framework for explaining time-dependent risk taking, risk-dependent time discounting, preferences for late resolution of uncertainty, and several other puzzling interaction effects between risk and time.
- Published
- 2012