Holt-Laury as a gumball machine

Abstract

The Holt and Laury [1] task is arguably the most widely employed method for eliciting individual risk attitudes in economics. However, although around 15% of standard experimental subjects fail to complete the task consistently, this fraction increases to an alarming 60-70% in the case of children, teenagers, and other non-standard subject pools. This paper explores extensively a visual version of the Holt and Laury task, where subjects choose six times between two gumball machines. Using a sample of 4,972 adolescents, we find that the Gumball Machine task decreases the presence of inconsistencies substantially to 20%. Cognitive skills appear to be a strong predictor of consistency and risk preferences, but gender differences are not found.