Collective risk-taking by couples: individual vs household risk
101 real couples in a controlled experimental risk-taking task varying household and individual income risks while controlling ex-ante income inequality. About 79 per cent of couples pooled risk at the household level when risks were borne symmetrically; about 36 per cent failed to pool when individual risks were borne asymmetrically. Intra-household risk inequality mattered more for unmarried than married couples, and the results held when restricted to couples where both spouses were risk-averse. Two things from the footnotes are quotable as the state of the field: the authors state that the literature on laboratory experiments with real couples is emerging, and they record that the eviden
101 real couples in a controlled experimental risk-taking task varying household and individual income risks while controlling ex-ante income inequality. About 79 per cent of couples pooled risk at the household level when risks were borne symmetrically; about 36 per cent failed to pool when individual risks were borne asymmetrically. Intra-household risk inequality mattered more for unmarried than married couples, and the results held when restricted to couples where both spouses were risk-averse. Two things from the footnotes are quotable as the state of the field: the authors state that the literature on laboratory experiments with real couples is emerging, and they record that the eviden
Written from the full text read 2026-10-18.
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FURTHER VERIFIED. Zheng, J., Couprie, H., & Hopfensitz, A. (2025). Collective risk-taking by couples: individual vs household risk. Theory and Decision, 98(4), 599-628. doi:10.1007/s11238-024-10021-z.