Risk Preferences Around the World Rieger, Marc Oliver; Wang, Mei; Hens, Thorsten
Management science,
03/2015, Letnik:
61, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We present results from a large-scale international survey on risk preferences conducted in 53 countries. In all countries, we find, on average, an attitude of risk aversion in gains and of risk ...seeking in losses. The degree of risk aversion shows significant cross-country differences. Moreover, risk attitudes in our sample depend not only on economic conditions but also on cultural factors, as measured by the Hofstede dimensions individualism and uncertainty avoidance. The data may also serve as an interesting starting point for further research on cultural differences in behavioral economics.
Data, as supplemental material, are available at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1869
.
This paper was accepted by Peter Wakker, decision analysis
.
The Impact of Culture on Loss Aversion Wang, Mei; Rieger, Marc Oliver; Hens, Thorsten
Journal of behavioral decision making,
April 2017, Letnik:
30, Številka:
2
Journal Article
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic changes in the way people around the globe live, and has had a profound negative impact on the global economy. Much of this negative impact did not result ...from the disease itself, but from the lockdown restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the virus. We investigate how national stock market indices reacted to the news of national lockdown restrictions in the period from January to May 2020. We find that lockdown restrictions led to different reactions in our sample of OECD and BRICS countries: there was a general negative effect resulting from the increase in lockdown restrictions, but we find strong evidence for underreaction during the lockdown announcement, followed by some overreaction that is corrected subsequently. This under-/overreaction pattern, however, is observed mostly during the first half of our time series, pointing to learning effects. Relaxation of the lockdown restrictions, on the other hand, had a positive effect on markets only during the second half of our sample, while for the first half of the sample, the effect is negative.
•Event study to analyze stock market reactions to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.•Time period January 22 to May 20, 2020.•Multi-country analysis for OECD and BRICS countries.•Negative stockmarket reactions to lockdown restrictions with under/overreaction pattern.•Stock markets are not efficient, but some learning effect detectable in the second half of our time series.
We study a model that relates dividend payout policy to behavioral issues based on the ideas of mental accounting. A panel analysis across 29 countries and over 43,000 firm-years demonstrates that ...our model studying the relation between dividends and patience, loss aversion, and ambiguity aversion can be verified empirically. Our paper seems to be the first that highlights empirically in a straightforward way the relevance of behavioral patterns as important determinants for corporate dividend policy, while previous empirical studies could tackle this issue only indirectly. With several robustness tests we also address potential doubts concerning the quality of our data and analyze further implications of our theory.
Estimations of the willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19 are important to plan the vaccination process and also to coordinate efforts to reach herd immunity.Aims and Objectives: In this article, ...we test standard measures of vaccination willingness against systematic biases caused by misunderstandings and lack of information. We use a survey among 730 persons living in Germany at the start of the official vaccination program. We elicit willingness to vaccinate first in a standard form, and then again after clarifications and after providing additional information. We find that a substantial number of persons who state initially that they do not want to get vaccinated does so simply because they want to let people with higher risk be vaccinated first. Appropriately rephrasing the question increases the willingness by around 5 percentage points. Information about herd immunity increases the willingness by additional 7%, confirming previous findings. Standard survey-based estimates of vaccination willingness might underestimate the real number of persons who want to get a vaccination. This number can be increased even further by simply providing appropriate information on herd immunity. In our sample this increased vaccination willingness from 71.4% to 83.6%.
Universal time preference Rieger, Marc Oliver; Wang, Mei; Hens, Thorsten
PloS one,
02/2021, Letnik:
16, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Time preferences are central to human decision making; therefore, a thorough understanding of their international differences is highly relevant. Previous measurements, however, vary widely in their ...methodology, from questions answered on the Likert scale to lottery-type questions. We show that these different measurements correlate to a large degree and that they have a common factor that can predict a broad spectrum of variables: the countries' credit ratings, gasoline prices (as a proxy for environmental protection), equity risk premiums, and average years of school attendance. The resulting data on this time preference factor for N = 117 countries and regions will be highly useful for further research. Our aggregation method is applicable to merge cross-cultural studies that measure the same latent construct with different methodologies.
In a survey among 250 subjects recruited at a German university and predominantly university students, we elicit opinions about social distancing, i. e., the necessity to keep away from other people ...to slow down the speed of the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 epidemics. The good news is that most students are supportive to it. A minority, however, does not completely agree. We find that how many elderly persons subjects knew personally, was the most significant factor for their attitudes toward social distancing. We also found a significant negative impact of believe in conspiracy theories on these attitudes. These theories have a non-negligible number of proponents, even among university students. Moreover, a certain degree of mistrust to media is widespread (around a third of the subjects). To improve positive attitudes to social distancing and thus to improve compliance we recommend therefore to emphasize relations of persons to elderly people in health communications more and to continue fighting against fake news and conspiracy theories regarding SARS-CoV-2.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has also led to many conspiracy theories. While the origin of the pandemic in China led some, including former US president Donald Trump, to dub the pathogen ..."Chinese virus" and to support anti-Chinese conspiracy narratives, it caused Chinese state officials to openly support anti-US conspiracy theories about the "true" origin of the virus. In this article, we study whether nationalism, or more precisely uncritical patriotism, is related to belief in conspiracy theories among normal people. We hypothesize based on group identity theory and motivated reasoning that for the particular case of conspiracy theories related to the origin of COVID-19, such a relation should be stronger for Chinese than for Germans. To test this hypothesis, we use survey data from Germany and China, including data from the Chinese community in Germany. We also look at relations to other factors, in particular media consumption and xenophobia.
Abstract
This article examines institutional and cultural determinants of the speed of government responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. We define the speed as the marginal rate of stringency index ...change. Based on cross-country data, we find that collectivism is associated with higher speed of government response. We also find a moderating role of trust in government, i.e., the association of individualism-collectivism on speed is stronger in countries with higher levels of trust in government. We do not find significant predictive power of democracy, media freedom and power distance on the speed of government responses.
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