August 29, 2012
The importance of understanding risk
If asked to describe the community sector’s attitude to risk, most observers would probably place it at the far end of the risk averse spectrum. This is going to be a problem in the not too distant future as communities are being expected to become ever more enterprising, asset owning and self-sufficient. As this simple experiment shows, being fearful of taking risks can produce not prudent decisions, but stupid ones.
29/08/12
Being unwilling to take risks is all very well in patient care but it can lead to utter stupidity when it comes to investment decisions. This was perhaps best demonstrated in 2006 by the US economists Uri Gneezy and George Wu, in one simple, cruel experiment.
Participants were asked to state how much they would pay for a $50 book token, a $100 book token, and to take part in a lottery in which they would win one or the other. It turned out that on average they were willing to pay $45 for the $100 token, and $26 for the $50 token.
So far so predictable. But then, in the lottery, things became a little uncertain and the participants started acting ridiculously. Given a 50 per cent chance of winning the more expensive token and a 50 per cent chance of winning the cheaper one, subjects were only willing to pay an average of $16. This was a situation where the worst possible outcome was getting the less expensive book token, but they valued it less than one in which they were guaranteed to get that token. Madness. Unless people are experienced in business, the smallest whiff of uncertainty can completely unsettle them.