Thoroughbred racing is referred to as “the sport of Kings”, because historically it was a leisure activity of the upper-class. Thoroughbred breeding on the other hand has transformed from a hobby of the upper-class to a worldwide agricultural industry. With the deep involvement of the royal and rich in the Thoroughbred industry, the auction prices of horses are raised significantly at the top end of the market. Research in the biological sciences suggests there exits correlations between dam age, foal birthrank, and the racing performance of Thoroughbred horses. This study first investigates how the market values these biological factors and whether they are correlated with racehorses’ career earnings. We further test the impact of sire age as there is limited literature related to the subject. By using a Hedonic pricing model, results show that Thoroughbred buyers at Keeneland September Sale are willing to pay more for the yearlings at 1st, 2nd, and 3rd birthranks, yearlings out of younger mares age from 4 to 10, and yearlings by experienced sires age from 12 to 18. Results from multivariate regressions suggest negative correlations between foal birthrank, parent age and career earnings.

The standing debate regarding how preferences should be defined is still evident in research today. Are they invariant to current endowment as a neoclassical practitioner would proclaim, or reference dependent as a behavioural economist would state? This theoretical discrepancy, regarding how preferences should be defined, when agents are experienced at what they do is found by List (2003) to be non-existing. In recollection of this notation, this thesis investigates how professional agents adopt risk in reference to a point that a neoclassical practitioner would deem irrational. With data on professional golf players on the U.S professional golf tour during 2013-2018, I find evidence that players respond in terms of what risk they adapt to a normatively irrelevant reference point in accordance to what Prospect Theory would predict. Indicating that even experienced agents have reference dependent preference towards risk. To give what the data proclaim a causal interpretation I adopt a quasi-experimental regression kink design. My estimates indicate a causal kink at my artificial threshold but are proven fragile to bandwidth alterations. Even though a causal claim is questionable, a sensitivity analysis finds evidence that my artificial threshold drives the relationship. Supporting the viewpoint that preferences towards risk are reference dependent and that experience does not eradicate the difference between what we do and what we should do.

O objetivo deste trabalho é estimar a distribuição conjunta do risco e da aversão ao risco no mercado de seguros de automóveis. Para tal, será utilizado o modelo estrutural proposto por Cohen e Einav (2007), que permite identificar esta distribuição à partir das coberturas escolhidas pelos segurados e dos sinistros declarados. Na metodologia empírica, utilizamos o método de Monte Carlo via Cadeias de Markov (MCMC). A base de dados utilizada se refere à apólices de seguros transacionadas na região metropolitana de São Paulo, apenas para a seguradora com maior participação neste mercado. Os resultados obtidos indicam que os coeficientes de aversão ao risco absoluto apresentam média baixa, mediana ainda menor e elevada heterogeneidade não observada. Observou-se também uma correlação negativa entre o risco e a aversão ao risco. / This study aims to estimate the distribution of risk aversion from the car insurance market. For this, the method proposed by Cohen e Einav (2007) model that allows unobserved risk is used. The data refer to the metropolitan area of São Paulo with an analysis restricted to only one insurer. The methodology will be the Gibbs sampling which enables increased data risk of latent variables and risk aversion. The results indicate a small mean level of absolute risk aversion and even lower median, featuring high dispersion coefficients.

In recent years, energy efficiency in the built environment has been attracting considerable interest to mitigate energy consumption. A number of scientific studies indicate that rising air pollution, decreasing biodiversity, ocean acidification and other adverse effects on humans and the environment in recent decades are due to greenhouse gas emissions, and a substantial share of the emissions can be attributed to energy usage in residential buildings. Investments in energy-efficient technologies have been made to alleviate such human induced causes contributing to the emissions, but they are still far from widespread, calling for a thorough understanding of individuals' decision-making processes to promote further adoption of energy efficiency investments. Although personality has been widely recognised as an explanatory factor of behaviour, a rigorous discussion of it in the context of energy efficiency investments is missing. As such, to understand the role of personality traits in making high-cost energy efficiency investments in residential buildings, this research applies a multidisciplinary approach to derive theoretical models that are evaluated in subsequent empirical investigations using quantitative methods and data from the UK and Germany. The findings suggest three ways through which personality can influence energy efficiency investments. The first is an indirect impact of personality traits through risk preferences, in which the significance of the personality effects depends on the financial subsidy context. The second is an indirect effect of personality traits through environmental concern. The third way suggests an impact of personality traits through their importance for individuals' capability and willingness to consider peer behaviour.

The chapters of this dissertation explore complementary areas of applied microeconomics, within the fields of experimental and environmental economics. In each case, preferences and institutions interact in ways that enhance or subvert efficiency. The first chapter, "The Girl Scout Cookie Phenomenon," uses a laboratory experiment to study favor trading in a public goods setting. The ability to practice targeted reciprocity increases contributions by 14%, which corresponds directly to increased efficiency. Subjects discriminate by rewarding group members who have been generous and withholding rewards from ungenerous group members. At least some reciprocal behavior is rooted in other-regarding preferences. When someone is outside the "circle of reciprocity," he gives less to the public good than in other settings. We find no evidence of indirect reciprocity. We find two behavioral types in each treatment, differing in baseline giving but not in tendency to reciprocate. The second chapter, "The Effects of Conservation Reserve Program Participation on Later Land Use," studies another public goods issue: conservation. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) pays farmers to retire farmland. We use a treatment effect framework to find that ex-CRP land is 21-28% more likely to be farmed than comparable non-CRP land. This implies that the CRP improves low-quality land, making it more attractive to farm. This could demonstrate inefficiency, since farmers gain private benefit from a program meant to provide a public good. On the other hand, farmed ex-CRP land is more likely to adopt conservation practices, although this may not be caused by CRP participation. The third chapter, "Learning from Mistakes," examines financial decisions by adult Rwandans in institutions inside and outside the lab. Over 50% of subjects make irrational choices over risk—choices that likely do not reflect their preferences, and are therefore likely inefficient—and these subjects share tendencies in their take-up of financial instruments. Risk-averse individuals are more likely to belong to a savings group and less likely to take out an informal loan. For those who make mistakes, however, as they become more risk averse, they are less likely to belong to a savings group and more likely to take up informal credit.

O objetivo deste trabalho é estimar a distribuição conjunta do risco e da aversão ao risco no mercado de seguros de automóveis. Para tal, será utilizado o modelo estrutural proposto por Cohen e Einav (2007), que permite identificar esta distribuição à partir das coberturas escolhidas pelos segurados e dos sinistros declarados. Na metodologia empírica, utilizamos o método de Monte Carlo via Cadeias de Markov (MCMC). A base de dados utilizada se refere à apólices de seguros transacionadas na região metropolitana de São Paulo, apenas para a seguradora com maior participação neste mercado. Os resultados obtidos indicam que os coeficientes de aversão ao risco absoluto apresentam média baixa, mediana ainda menor e elevada heterogeneidade não observada. Observou-se também uma correlação negativa entre o risco e a aversão ao risco. / This study aims to estimate the distribution of risk aversion from the car insurance market. For this, the method proposed by Cohen e Einav (2007) model that allows unobserved risk is used. The data refer to the metropolitan area of São Paulo with an analysis restricted to only one insurer. The methodology will be the Gibbs sampling which enables increased data risk of latent variables and risk aversion. The results indicate a small mean level of absolute risk aversion and even lower median, featuring high dispersion coefficients.

No description available.

Lo studio presenta un analisi dettagliata sul comportamento dei giocatori d'azzardo. I dati sono stati raccolti tramite un esperimento condotto “sul campo” che ha osservato i giocatori durante la loro attività di gioco in un agenzia di scommesse. L'esperimento ha permesso di ottenere il grado di severità del disordine da gioco d’azzardo e i principali tratti comportamentali dei partecipanti. La misurazione di tali tratti ha permesso di comprendere quali tra questi, meglio prediceva l’insorgere del disordine da gioco d’azzardo. La seconda parte del lavoro è stata rivolta a studiare la possibile relazione causale tra attività di gioco e una possibile modifica dei tratti comportamentali. Inoltre la diretta osservazione dei giocatori durante l’attività di gioco ha permesso di avere una traccia dettagliata del loro comportamento di gioco. I risultati sottolineano importanti differenze tra i comportamenti dei giocatori osservati usando procedure sperimentali e i comportamenti osservati durante l’attività di gioco. Nel primo caso non è stato rilevato nessun impatto significativo sulle preferenze individuali dovuto all’attività di gioco. Nel secondo caso, invece, si trova conferma del fenomeno conosciuto come “diminishing sensitivity”. In altre parole, all’aumentare delle perdite subite durante l’attività di gioco aumenta la propensione al rischio dei giocatori. / The thesis presents a lab-in-the-field experiment collecting data on gamblers’ behaviour. The study provides an estimate of the incidence of Problematic Gambling (PG) among the usual customers of a large betting agency in Milan. We elicit in an incentivized manner a large battery of behavioural traits in order to investigate which of them are mostly characterizing PG. Moreover, we investigate a causal relationship between gambling activity and behavioural traits. We also keep detailed track of the gambling activity during the day of the interview to see which are the more interest patterns of the gambling activity. The results underline important differences between real and experimental observation. When we use experimental task to investigate a possible variation in risk preferences due to gambling activity we do not observe any significant impact on risk preferences. When we inspect risk preferences using data coming from the real gambling activity we find evidence of the diminishing sensitivity phenomenon. The more losses they have collected during gambling, the more is the risk that gamblers are likely to take in the subsequent bets. These results indicate that gamblers are not risk-seekers in general, but their risk propensity seems to rise when they are involved in gambling.

Previous research has shown time and risk preferences to be important factors when explaining a variety of behavioural patterns, such as smoking, obesity and savings behaviour, while we focus on the effect on financial behaviour and financial well-being. Financial behaviour is measured using a twelve-item scale with individuals’ self-stated reports of for example savings behaviour and credit card usage. To measure financial well-being, we construct a measure consisting of individual’s self-perceived current and future financial condition. Time preferences are revealed by matching questions and we use different ways of measuring risk, both self-stated risk attitudes and risky choices revealed by gambles. Our results show that increased short term patience, leads to better financial behaviour. Also, individuals with higher financial risk attitudes, exhibit better financial behaviour. Contradictory, regarding actual decisions, the impact is different and being loss averse, has a positive impact on financial behaviour. Financial well-being is on the other hand influenced positively by both more short and long term patience. It also increases with general and financial risk attitudes. Risky choices do not have an impact on financial well-being. We show that risk preferences are affected by time preferences. Having a high short term discount rate leads to higher financial risk attitudes and increases the likelihood of being loss averse, while it decreases the likelihood of being risk averse. Our results are important for understanding heterogeneity in financial decision making and the financial well-being it fathers. This quantitative study is based on a large, representative sample of the Swedish population (N=2063). / Tidigare forskning har visat att tids- och riskpreferenser är viktiga faktorer när man försöker förklara olika beteendemönster, såsom rökning, övervikt och sparande. Vi fokuserar på tids- och riskpreferensers effekt på finansiellt beteende och finansiellt välmående. Finansiellt beteende mäts genom tolv frågor, där individer exempelvis anger hur ofta man sparar eller använder kreditkort. För att mäta finansiellt välmående, konstruerar vi ett mått baserat på individens självupplevda nuvarande och framtida ekonomiska tillstånd. Tidspreferenser mäts genom “matching questions” och vi använder flera riskmått, både individers angedda riskattityder och riskfyllda val som visas genom riskfyllda spel. Våra resultat visar att ökat tålamod på kort sikt leder till bättre finansiellt beteende. Dessutom uppvisar individer med högre finansiella riskattityder bättre finansiellt beteende. I motsats till detta uppvisar dock, vid faktiska beslut, förlustaversiva individer bättre finansiellt beteende. Finansiellt välmående påverkas, å andra sidan, positivt av både kort- och långsiktigt tålamod. Det förbättras också av både högre generella och finansiella riskattityder. De riskfyllda valen påverkar inte finansiellt välmående. Vi visar att tidspreferenser påverkar riskpreferenser. Att ha högre tålamod på kort sikt leder till högre finansiell riskattityd och ökar sannolikheten för att vara förlustaversiv, medan det minskar sannolikheten att vara riskaversiv. Våra resultat är viktiga för att förstå heterogen finansiell beslutsfattning och det finansiella välmående det leder till. Denna kvantitativa studie baseras på ett stort, representativt sampel av den svenska befolkningen (N=2063).

[pt] O desenvolvimento do campo de pesquisa em Finanças Comportamentais nos mostrou que por diversas vezes violamos postulados de racionalidade estrita utilizados pela Teoria da Utilidade Esperada e demais ferramentais ortodoxos de análise de decisões sob incerteza. Neste contexto, este trabalho utilizou como estrutura analítica alternativa as formas funcionais derivadas da Teoria do Prospecto e, tendo em vista esse modelo, foi replicado um experimento consolidado na literatura em uma amostra composta de alunos da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), sendo o objetivo estimar por máxima verossimilhança os parâmetros de risco e preferências temporais dos respondentes. Os resultados encontrados foram coerentes com outras evidências presentes na literatura, cabendo ressaltar que, para estes respondentes e talvez por sua formação, a modelo tradicional de desconto contínuo se mostrou uma aproximação melhor do que o previsto. / [en] The development of Behavioral Finance literature has shown us that for several times we violate the postulates of strict rationality assumed by the Theory of Expected Utility and other orthodox tools of decision analysis under uncertainty. In this context, this paper adopts the Prospect Theory as its analytical framework and, with this model, an experiment present in the literature of this field was conducted with a sample of students from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) which the purpose was to simultaneously estimate their risk and time preferences by applying a maximum likelihood approach. The results obtained were consistent with other present in the literature, and it should be pointed out that, for these respondents and perhaps because of their background, the orthodox continuous discount model proved to have a better fit than expected.