Off the Charts: Massive Unexplained Heterogeneity in a Global Study of Ambiguity Attitudes.

Summary Ambiguity attitudes have been prominently used in economic models, but we still know little about their demographic correlates or their generalizability beyond the West. We analyse the ambiguity attitudes of almost 3000 students across 30 countries. For gains we find ambiguity aversion everywhere, while ambiguity aversion is much weaker for losses. Ambiguity attitudes change systematically with probabilitiesfor both gains and losses. Much of the between-country variation can be explained through a few macroeconomic characteristics. In contrast, we find massive unexplained variation at the individual level. We also find much unexplained heterogeneity in individual responses to different decision tasks.