Grant-funded Project Nr. 455/2004/A-EK/CERGE Final Report
Project title:
Attitudes to Risk and Fairness - How They Are Related and How They Evolved
Research leader:
RNDr. Vítezslav Babický, M. A.
Co-researcher:
Andreas Ortmann, PhD.
Period of project:
2004-2004
Overall grant:
80 000 CZK
Project Results
As proposed, the project was intended for getting more data for the forthcoming dissertation of the grant holder. This goal was reached successfully. The money were used for a series of economics experiments with student subjects of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, of the Building Engineering Faculty at Czech Technical University, and municipal employees. The data basically confirm the hypotheses made by the theory. Work in progress was presented at Fourth Tucson Interdisciplinary Workshop on Decision Making, at Budapest Summer Seminar on Behavioral Economics, and at the Meeting of German Society of Experimental Economists. A preliminary analysis of the data was presented during a seminar in the Research Seminar series at CERGE-EI. Since the experimental sessions were run mostly in November and December, the final draft of the paper based on the theoretical and statistical analysis is still under preparation and will be submitted to the appropriate journal within a few weeks. The data analysis, with 192 independent observations, shows the link between risk and fairness attitudes, together with the influence of other independent variables as age, sex, disposable income or various cohorts. One remarkable result is that the decisions of students and municipal employees are not that different, at least in the distribution experiments considered in this project. These results have important policy implications. The final version of the paper will be available on my homepage, home.cerge-ei.cz/babicky. Currently, the version presented at the CERGE-EI seminar is located there.