The Impact of Violence on Individual Risk Preferences : Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Jakiela, Pamela ; Ozier, Owen

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: EMPLOYMENT;    RISKS;    ECONOMIC GROWTH;    STORM;    PRODUCTION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7440
RP-ID  :  WPS7440

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This study estimates the impact ofKenya’s post-election violence on individual riskpreferences. Because the crisis interrupted a longitudinalsurvey of more than five thousand Kenyan youth, this timingcreates plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to civilconflict by the time of the survey. The study measuresindividual risk preferences using hypothetical lotterychoice questions, which are validated by showing that theypredict migration and entrepreneurship in the cross-section.The results indicate that the post-election violence sharplyincreased individual risk aversion. Immediately after thecrisis, the fraction of subjects who are classified aseither risk neutral or risk loving dropped by roughly 26percent. The findings remain robust to an IV estimationstrategy that exploits random assignment of respondents towaves of surveying.