Evolution, heritable risk and skewness loving

Artikel

Our understanding of risk preferences can be sharpened by considering their evolutionary basis. The existing literature has focused on two sources of risk: idiosyncratic risk and aggregate risk. We introduce a new source of risk, heritable risk, in which there is a positive correlation between the fitness of a newborn agent and the fitness of her parent. Heritable risk was plausibly common in our evolutionary past and it leads to a strictly higher growth rate than the other sources of risk. We show that the presence of heritable risk in the evolutionary past may explain the tendency of people to exhibit skewness loving today.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Journal: Theoretical Economics ; ISSN: 1555-7561 ; Volume: 16 ; Year: 2021 ; Issue: 2 ; Pages: 403-424 ; New Haven, CT: The Econometric Society

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡
• Subject: Evolution of preferences ; risk attitude ; risk interdependence ; long-run growth rate ; fertility rate

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Heller, Yuval ; Robson, Arthur John
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): The Econometric Society
• (where): New Haven, CT
• (when): 2021

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.3982/TE3949
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/253506
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET