Adult Education and Risk Attitudes

Abstract

We provide empirical evidence that supports a causal link from education to risk attitudes when using representative data from surveys and artefactual experiments in Lima, Peru. On the one hand, when using three standard experimental measures of risk attitudes we find that they are positively correlated with years of education. On the other hand, we claim that this relationship is causal by taking advantage of an identification strategy that exploits an exogenous boom in construction of new schools in Lima, which allows us to provide evidence that shows that more education increases risk attitudes.