La thèse étudie l'impact de l'excès de confiance des banquiers sur le jugement, l'évaluation et la décision d'investissement (de crédit). Dans le but d'approfondir les recherches opposant experts et novices, nous avons répliqué notre étude sur des étudiants. Aux côtés des mesures et des analyses de l'excès de confiance, nous avons étudié l'attitude face au risque.Une étude qualitative a d'abord été menée, par entretiens semi-directifs avec des chargés d'affaires professionnels et directeurs d'agence. Nous avons observé des marques de surconfiance grâce à l'analyse lexicale quantitative et qualitative mais aucun lien de type cause à effet avec la décision n'a pu être établi.Ce travail a été complété par une expérimentation mesurant les différentes formes des concepts comportementaux et testant leurs impacts lors de jugement, évaluation et investissement dans des entreprises. Les résultats montrent un excès de confiance et une aversion au risque généralisés, sans différences significatives à ce stade entre les deux populations, mais de fortes disparités dans le processus d'étude des investissements et dans la prise de décision. Les étudiants ont tendance à former une impression immédiate sur les entreprises puis ils réviseront ce jugement lors de l'investissement. Les banquiers sont influencés dans leur choix d'investissement par les conclusions issues de la phase d'évaluation et leur niveau d'excès de confiance. / This work analyzes bankers' overconfidence in the granting process. Empirical and experimental work provides evidences that experts' judgment and students' judgment could differ. We have replicated our study on students and measure overconfidence and attitudes toward risk.In a first qualitative study, we analyze the bankers' overconfidence thanks to the interviews we made. We highlight their overconfidence; however we could not find any link such as cause/effect with their decisions.We extend our work with an experimentation with bankers and students. After measuring different forms of overconfidence and attitudes toward risk, we have tested the impact of overconfidence on a assets' study. Each participant had to judge, evaluate and decide to invest in different assets. The first results show that no differences can be made between bankers and students on the overconfidence and attitudes toward risk. Nevertheless, in the assets' study, students tend to form a global preference and revise their judgment during their investment (intervention of the risk aversion). On the opposite, bankers are influenced by the overconfidence bias and the evaluation stage when they form their investment choices.

<p>How households and individuals respond to adverse and unanticipated shocks is an important concern for both economists and policy makers. This is especially true in developing countries where poverty, weak infrastructure, and a lack of social safety nets often exacerbate the effects of adverse shocks on household welfare. My research addresses these issues in the context of three economic outcomes and behaviors - early life health and the accumulation of human capital, willingness to take on financial risk, and behavior in the labor market. The results of this research project both adds to our understanding of how life experiences shape individuals' well-being and behavior and how policy can help individuals achieve long-term improvements in the lives following adverse events.</p><p>My research focuses on households and individuals affected by a large-scale natural disaster, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. I utilize data from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), a unique longitudinal survey of individuals and households living in coastal communities in Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia, at the time of the tsunami. The STAR surveys were conducted annually for five years after the disaster and include a wide range of demographic, economic, and health measures.</p><p>In the first chapter, Child Height after a Natural Disaster, co-authored with Elizabeth Frankenberg, Duncan Thomas, and Jed Friedman, we investigate the immediate and long-run impacts on child health of in utero exposure to stress induced by the tsunami. We investigate whether in utero exposure to stress, as measured by tsunami-induced maternal posttraumatic stress, affected the growth of children born in the aftermath of the tsunami in the critical first five years of their lives. Although previous studies suggest that in utero exposure to stress is related to a number of adverse birth outcomes such as prematurity and lower birth weight, there is little evidence of the impact on linear growth, a strong correlate of later life income. We find evidence that children exposed to high levels of stress beginning in the second trimester experienced reduced growth in the first two years of their lives. We also find evidence that growth reductions largely disappear by age five. This suggests that significant catch-up growth is possible, particularly in the context of pronounced post-disaster reconstruction and economic rehabilitation.</p><p>In the second chapter, The Impact of a Natural Disaster on Observed Risk Aversion, I investigate the short and long-term impacts of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on attitudes toward risk. Attitudes toward risk are important determinants of economic, demographic, and health-related behaviors, but how these attitudes evolve after an event like a natural disaster remains unclear because past research has been confounded by issues of selective exposure, mortality, and migration. My study is the first to directly address these problems by utilizing exogenous variation in exposure to a disruptive event in a sample of individuals that is representative of the population as it existed at the time of the event. In addition, intensive efforts were made to track migrants in the sample population, which is important for this study because migration is common following events like natural disasters and is likely related to attitudes toward risk. I find that physical exposure to the tsunami (e.g., seeing or hearing the tsunami or being caught up in the tsunami) causes significant short-term decreases in observed aversion to risk, especially for the poor, but few longer-term differences. This finding has important implications for the design of effective post-disaster assistance policies. In particular, it implies that post-disaster assistance programs should include aid that is consistent with the observed risk attitudes of the survivors such as job training and capital to start-up businesses.</p><p>In the last chapter, Labor Market Outcomes following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, I investigate how labor market outcomes changed in coastal communities in Aceh and North Sumatra following the tsunami and the post-disaster recovery efforts. Although restoring the livelihoods of survivors of adverse events is critical for their long-term recovery, there is little evidence from developing countries of how labor market outcomes change after such events. Using the STAR data, I find a significant and persistent increase in paid employment for younger women in urban communities. The increase occurred in communities that were heavily damaged by the tsunami and those that were not, suggesting that the impacts of the disaster on livelihoods are likely long-lasting and extend beyond the communities that were directly stuck by the disaster.</p> / Dissertation

of the master thesis Title: Modeling of risk aversion Author: František Navrátil Department: Department of Probability and Mathematical Statistics Supervisor: Doc. RNDr. Petr Lachout, CSc. Abstract: The thesis discusses various theories that are able to model investor's subjective attitude to risk. The goal of the thesis is to clearly recapitulate possible mathematical approaches and to apply them in a real situation. One of the ways to tackle the problem is to use expected utility theory and a specific shape of a utility function. Another way is to choose a suitable risk measure. Especially useful for the modelling of risk aversion is the class of spectral risk measures that enables investor to choose a risk spectrum that meets his perception of risk. The thesis contains basic definitions concerning stochastic programming - a theory essential to solve the related optimization problems. Keywords: Risk aversion, utility function, probability constraint.

In this companion paper to Broll and Mukherjee (2017), we empirically analyse how exchange rate volatilities affect firms optimal production and exporting decisions. The firms elasticity of risk aversion determines the direction of the impact of exchange rate risk on exports. Based on a flexible utility function that incorporates all possible risk preferences, a unique structurally estimable equation is used to estimate the risk aversion elasticities for a panel of Indian service sector (non-financial) firms over 2004-2015, using the quantile regression method.

Thesis advisor: Alicia Munnell / Thesis advisor: Tony Webb / Risk level of investments helps to determine investment return in the long run. Consequently, it is important to understand how investors determine their acceptable level of risk. Previous studies have suggested that women have a lower risk tolerance in investing than men. This is troubling because it means that women are likely to make lower returns on investments than men. This difference in acceptable risk could lead to income inequality between men and women during retirement as people rely on wealth generated from investments made during their lifetime to live during this stage of life. This study seeks to explain what motivates women to choose their acceptable level of investment risk by expanding on the models of previous studies, which are believed to be overly simplistic in their treatment of gender. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

A comercialização da energia elétrica por parte de empresas geradoras que já possuem suas usinas construídas é um tema de grande relevância no setor. A dificuldade em definir a estratégia de venda desta energia, dentre as opções disponíveis no atual modelo regulatório, torna necessário o desenvolvimento de metodologias e ferramentas que auxiliem na tomada de decisão, contabilizando as expectativas e riscos destas decisões. A metodologia com ferramental associado apresentada neste trabalho foi desenvolvida com base em conceitos amplamente utilizados no mercado financeiro para a formação de portfólio de ativos, aliados ao conceito basilar de utilidade das geradoras de energia elétrica, permitindo quantificar a predisposição à tomada de risco e a estruturação de informações públicas dos agentes do setor para a definição de perfis de geradores em relação à estratégia de venda de energia. A contribuição central deste trabalho reside na proposta de uma metodologia que define a melhor estratégia de participação em leilões de energia existente para geradores. / The energy trading activity for Generation Companies (Gencos) owning operating existing power plants is a topic of great relevance in the industry. The difficulty to define the energy selling strategy, given all available options in the actual regulatory model, makes necessary the development of methodologies and tools for decision making support, accounting the expectations and risks embedded in these decisions. The methodology and associated computational tool presented in this work was developed based on concepts widely used in the financial market for assets portfolio composition, the Gencos utility, making feasible to quantify the predisposition of risktaking, and the structuring of public information from the players involved for the definition of generators profiles in relation to the strategy of selling energy. The main contribution of this work lies on the validation of one methodology that defines the Gencos best strategy participation in the auctions designed for trading the existing power plants energy production.

Extensive studies show that risk has a large impact on investment decisions. In addition, studies also show that risk behavior varies between men and women, where women tend to behave more risk averse. The purpose of this study is to examine how private investors make their investment decisions under risk but also to see if there are differences between men and women. The methods used in this research consists of a web survey that has been distributed via social media and interviews, to hear how private investors reason about investment decisions. The result from the web survey show that age and income does not affect investment decisions or their risk behavior. Neither does their own assessed willingness to take risk or knowledge in investments. The women in this research consider themselves to be more risk averse than men. However, when testing for their actual risk behavior, results show that women take more risk than men. Therefore, there are differences in investment decisions between women and men. / Tidigare forskning visar på att risk har en stor betydelse vid investeringsbeslut. Vissa studier menar även på att det föreligger en skillnad i kvinnor och mäns riskbenägenhet, där kvinnor anses vara mer riskaverta än män. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur småsparare fattar sina investeringsbeslut under risk. Med hänsyn till tidigare studier har författarna även ett delsyfte att undersöka om och hur riskbenägenheten skiljer sig mellan kön. Studien har använt enkätundersökning samt intervjuer för att både ha tillgång till stora mängder data, men även för att fördjupa sig i det som enkäten inte kan besvara. Resultatet från enkätundersökningen visar att ålder och inkomst inte påverkar investeringsbeslut, samtidigt som intervjuerna säger det motsatta. Respondenternas självuppskattade riskbenägenhet och ansedda kunskap har heller ingen påverkan på deras investeringsbeslut. Kvinnorna i studien anger en lägre uppskattad riskbenägenhet än män samtidigt som de, i motsats till tidigare studier, agerar mer risksökande. Därmed föreligger det s

A comercialização da energia elétrica por parte de empresas geradoras que já possuem suas usinas construídas é um tema de grande relevância no setor. A dificuldade em definir a estratégia de venda desta energia, dentre as opções disponíveis no atual modelo regulatório, torna necessário o desenvolvimento de metodologias e ferramentas que auxiliem na tomada de decisão, contabilizando as expectativas e riscos destas decisões. A metodologia com ferramental associado apresentada neste trabalho foi desenvolvida com base em conceitos amplamente utilizados no mercado financeiro para a formação de portfólio de ativos, aliados ao conceito basilar de utilidade das geradoras de energia elétrica, permitindo quantificar a predisposição à tomada de risco e a estruturação de informações públicas dos agentes do setor para a definição de perfis de geradores em relação à estratégia de venda de energia. A contribuição central deste trabalho reside na proposta de uma metodologia que define a melhor estratégia de participação em leilões de energia existente para geradores. / The energy trading activity for Generation Companies (Gencos) owning operating existing power plants is a topic of great relevance in the industry. The difficulty to define the energy selling strategy, given all available options in the actual regulatory model, makes necessary the development of methodologies and tools for decision making support, accounting the expectations and risks embedded in these decisions. The methodology and associated computational tool presented in this work was developed based on concepts widely used in the financial market for assets portfolio composition, the Gencos utility, making feasible to quantify the predisposition of risktaking, and the structuring of public information from the players involved for the definition of generators profiles in relation to the strategy of selling energy. The main contribution of this work lies on the validation of one methodology that defines the Gencos best strategy participation in the auctions designed for trading the existing power plants energy production.

While the market for credit instruments grew continuously in the decade before 2008, its liquidity has dried up significantly in the current crisis, and investors have become aware of the possible consequences of being exposed to credit risk. In this thesis we address these issues by pricing credit instruments using utility indifference pricing, a method that takes into account the investor's personal risk aversion and which is not affected by the lack of liquidity. Through stochastic optimal control methods, we use indifference pricing with exponential utility to determine corporate bond prices and CDS spreads. In the first part we examine how these quantities are affected by risk aversion under different models of default. The emphasis lies on a hybrid model, in which a regime switch of the reference entity is triggered by a creditworthiness index correlated to its stock price. The second part generalizes this setup by introducing uncertainty in the model parameters. Robust optimal control has been used independently in the literature to address model uncertainty for portfolio selection problems. Here, we incorporate this approach with utility indifference and derive some analytical and numerical results on how model uncertainty affects credit spreads.

While the market for credit instruments grew continuously in the decade before 2008, its liquidity has dried up significantly in the current crisis, and investors have become aware of the possible consequences of being exposed to credit risk. In this thesis we address these issues by pricing credit instruments using utility indifference pricing, a method that takes into account the investor's personal risk aversion and which is not affected by the lack of liquidity. Through stochastic optimal control methods, we use indifference pricing with exponential utility to determine corporate bond prices and CDS spreads. In the first part we examine how these quantities are affected by risk aversion under different models of default. The emphasis lies on a hybrid model, in which a regime switch of the reference entity is triggered by a creditworthiness index correlated to its stock price. The second part generalizes this setup by introducing uncertainty in the model parameters. Robust optimal control has been used independently in the literature to address model uncertainty for portfolio selection problems. Here, we incorporate this approach with utility indifference and derive some analytical and numerical results on how model uncertainty affects credit spreads.