Ambiguity Attitudes for Real-World Sources: Field Evidence from a Large Sample of Investors
40 Pages Posted: 6 Mar 2019 Last revised: 8 Feb 2024
There are 3 versions of this paper
Ambiguity Attitudes for Real-World Sources: Field Evidence from a Large Sample of Investors
Ambiguity Attitudes About Investments: Evidence from the Field
Ambiguity Attitudes About Investments: Evidence from the Field
Date Written: February 14, 2019
Abstract
The online appendix to this paper can be found at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3332255.
Empirical studies of ambiguity aversion mostly use artificial events such as Ellsberg urns to control for unknown probability beliefs. The present study measures ambiguity attitudes using real-world events in a large sample of investors. We elicit ambiguity aversion and perceived ambiguity for a familiar company stock, a local stock index, a foreign stock index, and Bitcoin. Measurement reliability is higher than for artificial sources in previous studies. Ambiguity aversion is highly correlated for different assets, while perceived ambiguity varies more between assets. Further, we show that ambiguity attitudes are related to actual investment choices.
Keywords: ambiguity, decision-making under uncertainty, investment, preferences, financial literacy
JEL Classification: D81, C93, D14
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation