Are People Inequality-Averse, or Just Risk-Averse?
Individuals’ preferences for risk and inequality are measured through choices between imagined societies and lotteries.
Individuals’ preferences for risk and inequality are measured through choices between imagined societies and lotteries.
This paper employs a choice experiment to obtain consumer preferences and willingness to pay for food product quality attributes currently not available in Sweden.
We find, using survey-experimental methods, that most individuals are concerned with both relative income and relative consumption of particular goods. The degree of concern varies in the expected direction depending on the properties of the good.
We investigate the effectiveness of different smoking policies on smokers’ expectations to quit smoking using a choice experiment on a sample of smokers identified within the World Health Organization (WHO) MONICA Project.
This paper presents an experimental study of two different pollution compliance games: collective vis-à-vis random fining as a means to regulate non-point pollution. Result suggests the importance of considering subject pool differences in the evaluation of environmental policies by means of experiments, particularly if those policies involve certain forms of management decisions.
This paper examines whether the benefits of the Melamchi water supply
project in Nepal are likely to exceed its costs, assuming that high-quality municipal
water services can be delivered to households and firms in the urbanized part of
the Kathmandu Valley. Monte Carlo simulations are used to explore the sensitivity
of the net present value and economic internal rate of return calculations to a wide
range of assumptions and input parameters.We find that extreme assumptions are
This paper analyzes the welfare effects of improved health status through increased water quality using a choice experiment. The survey was administered to a random sample of households in metropolitan Cairo, Egypt.
Using a contingent valuation survey, people’s willingness to pay for a given risk reduction is found to be much larger, consistently more than two times as large, when traveling by air compared to by taxi.
Follow-up questions revealed that an important reason for this discrepancy is that many experience a higher mental suffering from flying, and that they are willing to pay to reduce this suffering. It was also consistently found that people are willing to pay more for a certain risk reduction if the original price was higher. Policy implications are discussed.
Social inequality aversion is measured through a veil-of-ignorance experiment with Indian students. The median relative risk aversion is found to be quite high, about 3, and independent caste.
Co-authors:
G. Gupta and O. Johansson-Stenman
The main objective of thus study is to contribute to the design of policies dealing with the problems of congestion and air pollution in the urban context of a typical developing country.