The emergence of risk aversion

Economic decision making under uncertainty is universally characterized by aversion to risk. One of the most basic concepts in economic theory, risk aversion is usually explained by the concavity of the utility function, which, in turn, is based on a person's satiability for wealth. I use genetic algorithms to show that risk aversion, and some related consequences, emerge naturally as a result of evolutionary pressures. In analogy to the well-known hillclimbing metaphor, it is helpful in this context to characterize optimizing under uncertainty as “surfing in a fitness seascape.” © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Comparative higher-degree Ross risk aversion

We provide generalized comparative global conditions for higher-degree Ross risk aversion, which are similar to those studied by Ross for risk aversion. This generalization corresponds to the special cases of comparative risk aversion as developed by Ross (1981) and of comparative downside risk aversion as developed by Modica and Scarsini (2005).     

Multivariate risk aversion with applications

Two measures of multivariate risk aversion, closely related t ocertain eigenvalue problems are proposed here. These measures are shown t obe ralated to multivariate distance concepts in statistics and its applications include risk analysis in portfolio theory, vector efficiently and compparison of minimax strategies in applied modelling.     

Comparative higher-degree Ross risk aversion

We provide generalized comparative global conditions for higher-degree Ross risk aversion, which are similar to those studied by Ross for risk aversion. This generalization corresponds to the special cases of comparative risk aversion as developed by Ross (1981) and of comparative downside risk aversion as developed by Modica and Scarsini (2005).     

Possibilistic risk aversion and coinsurance problem

The coinsurance problem is an important topic in insurance decisions. A risk-averse agent should choose a coinsurance rate maximizing the expected final wealth. In this paper, we propose a possibilistic model of coinsurance problem. A decision problem whose solution is the optimal coinsurance is formulated. Some of its properties, the calculation modality and its behavior towards the changes of risk aversion are studied.     

Increasing risk aversion and life-cycle investing

Mathematics and Financial Economics - We derive the optimal portfolio for an investor with increasing relative risk aversion in a complete continuous-time securities market. The IRRA assumption...     

Household risk aversion and portfolio choices

In practice, stock investment is one of the most important decisions made by households. The primary goal of this paper is to explain family investment decisions under the assumptions of household member’s preferences and efficient risk sharing based on the collective household model. In particular, by examining the absolute (relative) risk aversion of the household welfare function, we demonstrate how household’s portfolio allocation in stocks changes with family wealth. We examine two types of preference heterogeneity between family members: parameter heterogeneity and functional form heterogeneity. This study offers an alternative explanation of household portfolio choice corresponding with the observation that wealthier households tend to hold greater share of their wealth in risky assets. Specifically, if two decision-makers have standard constant relative risk aversion preference with different relative risk aversions in a household, family’s relative risk aversion decreases as household wealth increases (decreasing relative risk aversion).     

A method for determining risk aversion functions from uncertain market prices of risk

In Gzyl and Mayoral (2008) we developed a technique to solve the following type of problems: How to determine a risk aversion function equivalent to pricing a risk with a load, or equivalent to pricing different risks by means of the same risk distortion function. The information on which the procedure is based consists of the market prices of the risk. Here we extend that method to cover the case in which there may be uncertainties in the market prices of the risks.     

Characterizations of risk aversion in cumulative prospect theory

In this paper, we investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions for a decision maker to be monotone risk averse and left-monotone risk averse, respectively, in cumulative prospect theory (CPT). Our results show that the decision maker is more pessimistic than greedy if she is either monotone or left-monotone risk averse, which is similar to that of Chateauneuf et al. (Econ Theory 25(3):649–667, 2005) in the rank-dependent expected utility model. Detailed examples are presented to illustrate the main theorems. With this work, we make a progress in the characterizations of risk aversion in CPT, which is essential in understanding the features of CPT and its applications in finance and insurance.

     

Dynamic sampling algorithms for multi-stage stochastic programs with risk aversion

We consider the incorporation of a time-consistent coherent risk measure into a multi-stage stochastic programming model, so that the model can be solved using a SDDP-type algorithm. We describe the implementation of this algorithm, and study the solutions it gives for an application of hydro-thermal scheduling in the New Zealand electricity system. The performance of policies using this risk measure at different levels of risk aversion is compared with the risk-neutral policy.     

Duopolistic competition under risk aversion and uncertainty

A monopolist typically defers entry into an industry as both price uncertainty and the level of risk aversion increase. By contrast, the presence of a rival typically hastens entry under risk neutrality. Here, we examine these two opposing effects in a duopoly setting. We demonstrate that the value of a firm and its entry decision behave differently with risk aversion and uncertainty depending on the type of competition. Interestingly, if the leader’s role is defined endogenously, then higher uncertainty makes her relatively better off, whereas with the roles exogenously defined, the impact of uncertainty is ambiguous.     

Subjective expected utility with nonincreasing risk aversion

It is shown that assumptions about risk aversion, usually studied under the pre-supposition of expected utility maximization, have a surprising extra merit at an earlier stage of the measurement work: together with the sure-thing principle, these assumptions imply subjective expected utility maximization for monotonic continuous weak orders.This study was carried out while the author was at the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics, Department of Statistical Methods, Voorburg, The Netherlands.     

Determination and estimation of risk aversion coefficients

Computational Management Science - In the paper we consider two types of utility functions often used in portfolio allocation problems, i.e. the exponential utility and the quadratic utility. We...     

A note on pricing with risk aversion

We consider the pricing problem of a risk-averse seller facing uncertain demand. Demand uncertainty stems from buyers’ valuations being privately observed. By imposing very mild restrictions on the distribution of buyers’ valuations (an increasing generalized failure rate distribution) and the Bernoulli utility function, we show that a risk-averse seller will unambiguously post a lower price than a risk-neutral counterpart.     

Univariate and multivariate measures of risk aversion and risk premiums

This paper develops univariate and multivariate measures of risk aversion for correlated risks. We derive Rubinstein's measures of risk aversion from the risk premiums with correlated random initial wealth and risk. It is shown that these measures are not only consistent with those for uncorrelated or independent risks, but also have the corresponding local properties of the Arrow-Pratt measures of risk aversion. Thus Rubinstein's measures of risk aversion are the appropriate extension of the Arrow-Pratt measures of risk aversion in the univariate case. We also derive a risk aversion matrix from the risk premiums with correlated initial wealth and risk vectors. This matrix measure is the multivariate version of Rubinstein's measures and is also the generalization of Duncan's results for non-random initial wealth. The univariate and multivariate measures of risk aversion developed in this paper are applied to portfolio theory in Li and Ziemba [15].This research was partially supported by the National Research Council of Canada.     

Impact of demographic and economic variables on financial policy purchase timing decisions

This paper investigates the extent to which consumers' demographic factors influence their financial policy purchasing behaviours and also explores how the external economic environment affects consumers' propensities to purchase financial products. The Cox proportional hazard model is used to explore these issues. The results suggest that consumer decisions on the timing of financial product purchases are largely explained by changes in the economic environment in terms of stock market, the housing market, average earnings, consumer confidence, and interest rates. The influence of customer demographic factors is also important but secondary.     

Characterization of left-monotone risk aversion in the RDEU model

We extend the characterization of the left-monotone risk aversion developed by Ryan (2006) to the case of unbounded random variables. The notion of weak convergence is insufficient for such an extension. It requires the solution of a host of delicate convergence problems. To this end, some further intrinsic properties of the location independent risk order are investigated. The characterization of the right-monotone risk aversion for unbounded random variables is also mentioned. Moreover, we remove the gap in the proof of the main result in Ryan (2006).     

Option pricing bounds with standard risk aversion preferences

For a theoretical valuation of a financial option, various models have been proposed that require specific hypotheses regarding both the stochastic process driving the price behaviour of the underlying security and market efficiency. When some of these assumptions are removed, we obtain an uncertainty interval for the option price. Up to now, the most restrictive intervals for option prices have been obtained using the decreasing absolute risk aversion (DARA) rule in a state-preference approach. Precautionary saving entails the concept of prudence; in particular, decreasing absolute prudence is a necessary and sufficient condition that guarantees that the saving of wealthier people is less sensitive to the risk associated to future incomes. If this condition is coupled with the DARA assumption we obtain standard risk aversion (SRA), which guarantees on the one hand that introducing a zero-mean background risk to wealth makes people less willing to accept another independent risk and on the other hand that an increase in the risk of the returns distribution of an asset reduces the demand for this asset. The main idea of this contribution is to apply decreasing absolute prudence and SRA rules in a state-preference context in order to obtain efficient bounds for the value of European-style options portfolio strategies. Lower and upper bounds for the options portfolio value are obtained by solving non-linear optimization problems. The numerical experiments carried out show the efficiency of the technique proposed.