Stability of risk attitudes and media coverage of economic news

Tausch, Franziska; Zumbühl, Maria (2018). Stability of risk attitudes and media coverage of economic news. Journal of economic behavior & organization, 150, pp. 295-310. Elsevier 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.01.013

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This paper investigates the impact of exogenous changes in the economic environment on individuals’ risk attitudes. We combine data on media coverage of economic news with information on the self-stated willingness to take risks from the German Socioeconomic Panel Study. The average daily frequency of economic news reports is measured for different time frames preceding the date of the risk attitude elicitation. We find that while a short term increase in good news is positively related to the willingness to take risks, the relation is negative if we consider a long term increase. An increase in negative economic news coverage is negatively related to individuals’ willingness to take risks, irrespective of the time frame. A positive (negative) correlation between bad (good) news coverage and individuals’ worries about the economic state suggests that changes in risk perception may partly mediate the relation between news coverage and risk attitudes.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Economics

UniBE Contributor:

Zumbühl, Maria

Subjects:

300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics

ISSN:

0167-2681

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Dino Collalti

Date Deposited:

24 Jun 2019 17:23

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:27

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.jebo.2018.01.013

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.127503

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/127503

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