Attitudes Toward Uncertainty Among the Poor: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

The authors looked at risk and ambiguity attitudes among Ethiopian peasants in one of the poorest regions of the world and compared their attitudes to a standard Western university student sample elicited by the same decision task.

Strong risk aversion and ambiguity aversion were found with the Ethiopian peasants, and these attitudes are similar to those of the university students. Testing for the effect of socioeconomic variables on uncertainty attitudes showed that poor health increased both risk and ambiguity aversion.

EfD Authors

Professor Peter Martinsson Research Fellow
Haileselassie Medhin Research Associate

Keywords

Files

link to pdf 209.8 kB

Centers

eeu sweden
ethiopia

Type of publication

EfD Discussion paper

Reference

Akay, Alpaslan, Peter Martinsson, Haileselassie Medhin, and Stefan Trautmann (2010), "Attitudes Toward Uncertainty Among the Poor: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia", EfD Discussion Paper 10-04, Environment for Development Initiative and Resources for the Future, Washington DC, February 2010.

Environment for Development

Environment for Development