Risk preferences drive much of human decision making including investment, career and health choices and many more. Thus, understanding the determinants of risk preferences refines our understanding of choice in a broad array of environments. We assess the relationship between risk preferences, prenatal exposure to sex hormones and gender for a sample of Ladinos, which is an ethnic group comprising 62.86% of the population of Guatemala. Prenatal exposure to sex hormones has organizational effects on brain development, and has been shown to partially explain risk preferences for Caucasians. We measure prenatal exposure to sex hormones using the ratio of the length of the index finger to the length of the ring finger (2D:4D), which is negatively (positively) correlated with prenatal exposure to testosterone (estrogen). We find that Ladino males are less risk averse than Ladino females, and that Ladino males have lower 2D:4D ratios than Ladino females on both hands. We find that the 2D:4D ratio does not explain risk preferences for Ladinos. This is true for both genders, and both hands. Our results highlight the importance of exploring the behavioral significance of 2D:4D in non-Caucasian racial groups.

In organized energy markets that use locational pricing, power generators and energy suppliers procure financial transmission rights (FTRs) to hedge against grid congestion charges, while third-party speculators attempt to capture a return with these extremely volatile contracts. This paper develops a novel methodology for estimating the systematic risk of individual FTRs and detecting the presence of abnormal returns among these financial instruments. The prevalence of congestion paths with abnormal returns could be used by policy experts as an efficiency measure when assessing the performance of FTR markets. Being the only organized energy market in the Western Interconnection, California has implemented a version of FTRs officially known as congestion revenue rights (CRRs). This paper applies the proposed methodology to all auctioned CRRs from 2009 to 2015. Our analysis identifies the paths that exhibit persistent abnormal returns, with the majority of them being positive. We also compare the patterns of risk and abnormal returns between on-peak and off-peak CRRs, and find no significant differences.

We experimentally examine perfectly discriminating contests under three valuation structures: pure common-value, pure private-value and a case with both private and common value components. In line with the results from the previous literature, we find that, regardless of valuation structure, contestants often choose very conservative expenditures, and very aggressive expenditures. Average expenditures exceed Nash equilibrium predictions. In valuation structures with a common value component, contestants often choose expenditures in excess of the expected value of the prize conditional on winning the contest. That is, they often guarantee themselves negative payoffs in expectation.

In many auctions the valuation structure involves both private and common value elements. Existing experimental evidence (e.g. Goeree and Offerman in Am. Econ. Rev. 92(3):625-643, 2002) demonstrates that first-price auctions with this valuation structure tend to be inefficient, and inexperienced subjects tend to bid above the break-even bidding threshold. In this paper, we compare first-price auctions with an alternative auction mechanism: the least-revenue auction. This auction mechanism shifts the risk regarding the common value of the good to the auctioneer. Such a shift is desirable when ex post negative payoffs for the winning bidder results in unfulfilled contracts, as is often the case in infrastructure concessions contracts. We directly compare these two auction formats within two valuation structures: (1) pure common value and (2) common value with a private cost. We find that, relative to first-price auctions, bidding above the break-even bidding threshold is significantly less prevalent in least-revenue auctions regardless of valuation structure. As a result, revenue in first-price auctions is higher than in least-revenue auctions, contrary to theory. Further, when there are private and common value components, least-revenue auctions are significantly more efficient than first-price auctions.

Emissions taxes impose a fixed price on emissions, whereas under tradable permit schemes prices emerge in the secondary permit market. The delayed price discovery under tradable permits creates uncertainty about the future cost of compliance that liable emitters face. To mitigate this uncertainty, some jurisdictions have designed policies to regulate GHG with an emissions tax that is in force for several years, subsequently transforming into a tradable permit scheme. This paper examines the effects that this staged transitionfrom no regulation to a regulation by a tax, to a regulation by tradable permitshas on abatement investment, quantity of emissions, permit prices and overall regulation efficiency. The effects of the inter-temporal mix of policy instruments are compared to the effects of single policy instrument: a tax-only, and a tradable permit-only regulation. Our investigation relied on laboratory economics methods to test economic behaviour under these three policy regimes. We find that a staged transition from a tax to a tradable permit scheme results in more socially desirable outcomes on a range of criteria when compared to a regulation based solely on tradable permits, and specifically, it improves ability to make better abatement investment decisions.