Does violence increase risk aversion?

Drs. Pamela Jakiela and Owen Ozier did a natural experiment by mistake. Their survey was interrupted by the Kenyan post-electoral violence: a thousand dead; thousands internally displaced. Participants had an equal chance of being interviewed before or after survey. So this enabled Pam and Owen to explore the impact of conflict on people's preferences.

What did they find?

Did conflict increase or decrease risk aversion?

Do their survey results reflect real-world behavioural change?

Does risk-aversion matter for development?

Why do we need to know about people's preferences for risk aversion?

Curious? Click here to read the paper and learn more:

http://www.pamjakiela.com/JakielaOzier-riskpreferences-2017-08-29.pdf

You can read more of Pam's work here: http://www.pamjakiela.com/

And Owen's here: http://economics.ozier.com/owen/

Thank you for listening!