Do Risk Preferences Change? Evidence from the Great East Japan Earthquake

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hanaoka, Chie; Shigeoka, Hitoshi; Watanabe, Yasutora
• 署名单位: Toyo University; Simon Fraser University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Tokyo
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20170048
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 298-330
• 关键词: hurricane katrina; gender-differences; health-insurance; field experiment; job loss; aversion; attitudes; BEHAVIOR; losses; WEALTH

摘要

We investigate whether individuals' risk preferences change after experiencing a natural disaster, specifically, the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Exploiting the panels of nationally representative surveys on risk preferences,wefind that men who experienced greater intensity of the earthquake became more risk tolerant a year after the Earthquake. Interestingly, the effects on men's risk preferences are persistent even five years after the Earthquake at almost the same magnitude as those shortly after the Earthquake. Furthermore, these men gamble more, which. is consistent with. the direction of changes in risk preferences. We find no such. pattern for women.