Econometrica

Journal Of The Econometric Society

An International Society for the Advancement of Economic
Theory in its Relation to Statistics and Mathematics

Edited by: Guido W. Imbens • Print ISSN: 0012-9682 • Online ISSN: 1468-0262

Econometrica: May, 2022, Volume 90, Issue 3

Randomize at your own Risk: on the Observability of Ambiguity Aversion

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA18137
p. 1085-1107

Aurélien Baillon, Yoram Halevy, Chen Li

Facing several decisions, people may consider each one in isolation or integrate them into a single optimization problem. Isolation and integration may yield different choices, for instance, if uncertainty is involved, and only one randomly selected decision is implemented. We investigate whether the random incentive system in experiments that measure ambiguity aversion provides a hedge against ambiguity, making ambiguity‐averse subjects who integrate behave as if they were ambiguity neutral. Our results suggest that about half of the ambiguity averse subjects integrated their choices in the experiment into a single problem, whereas the other half isolated. Our design further enables us to disentangle properties of the integrating subjects' preferences over compound objects induced by the random incentive system and the choice problems in the experiment.


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Supplemental Material

Supplement to "Randomize at your own Risk: on the Observability of Ambiguity Aversion"

Baillon, Aurélien, Yoram Halevy and Chen Li

This zip file contains replication files for the manuscript.

Supplement to "Randomize at your own Risk: on the Observability of Ambiguity Aversion"

Baillon, Aurélien, Yoram Halevy and Chen Li

This online appendix contains material not found within the manuscript.

Supplement to "Randomize at your own Risk: on the Observability of Ambiguity Aversion"

Baillon, Aurélien, Yoram Halevy and Chen Li

Experimental Material for the manuscript.