Suchergebnisse

Although risk aversion has been used in economic models for over 275 years, the past few decades have shown how higher order risk attitudes are also quite important. A behavioral approach to defining such risk attitudes was developed by Eeckhoudt and Schlesinger (2006), based upon simple lottery preference. This article show how the mathematics of lattice theory can be used to model these lottery preferences. In addition to modeling a simple lattice structure, I show how such lattices can be extended in order to develop a better understanding of higher order risk attitudes.

We examine asset prices in a representative-agent model of general equilibrium. Assuming only that individuals are risk averse, we determine conditions on the changes in asset risk that are both necessary and sufficientfor the asset price to fall. We show that these conditions neither imply, nor are implied by the conditions for second-degree stochastic dominance. For example, if the payoff on an asset becomes riskier in the sense of second-degree stochastic dominance, the equilibrium price of the asset need not necessarily fall. We further demonstrate how our results can be imbedded into a market that is incomplete in the sense of containing an uninsurable background risk, such as a risk on labor income. We extend our model to show how a miscalibration of the asset risk can lead to a partial explanation of high equity premia (i.e., the "equity premium puzzle").