Paper #643

Title:

Stochastic dominance and absolute risk aversion

Authors:

Jordi Caballé and Joan Esteban

Date:

July 2002

Abstract:

In this paper we proose the infimum of the Arrow-Pratt index of absolute risk aversion as a measure of global risk aversion of a utility function. We then show that, for any given arbitrary pair of distributions, there exists a threshold level of global risk aversion such that all increasing concave utility functions with at least as much global risk aversion would rank the two distributions in the same way. Furthermore, this threshold level is sharp in the sense that, for any lower level of global risk aversion, we can find two utility functions in this class yielding opposite preference relations for the two distributions.

Keywords:

Risk aversion, stochastic dominance

JEL codes:

D81, D30

Area of Research:

Microeconomics

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