Long-term effects of risk and time preferences on households welfare in emerging market economies

经济学理论认为，风险厌恶和时间折现应该会导致财富减少。总而言之，较贫穷的家庭，特别是在发展中国家，被认为比较富裕的家庭更厌恶风险和更没有耐心，这反过来又会导致较贫穷的家庭作出管理决定，从而使他们的生活长期处于贫困之中。然而，由于数据限制和高度划分的研究方法，我们对风险和时间偏好、风险管理和贫困之间复杂而动态的相互作用，特别是在幸福的不同层面上的理解仍然相当有限。这项研究建议采用一种整体办法，将风险和时间偏好、风险管理和贫穷的多个层面之间的动态相互关系分开，以便为转型期经济中的农村家庭的可持续发展得出较长期的前景。泰国的新兴市场经济体的贫困率大幅下降，但仍然极易受到不利风险的影响，这是有效研究偏好、风险管理和贫困之间动态互动的合适阶段。拟议的研究通过区分两个层面的风险管理战略来研究这些相互作用，即(I)个人层面的风险管理，如分散收入来源；(Ii)群体层面的风险管理，如与社交网络中的其他家庭分担风险。这两个层面的风险管理战略的驱动因素和影响都是调查对象。对风险管理决策驱动因素的研究将超越标准经济学理论，并纳入前景理论和准双曲线贴现等替代理论。在风险管理战略的影响中，将同时考虑货币指标和非货币福祉指标。这项研究的经验基础建立在DFG-For 756项目范围内收集的2007至2013年5波泰国农村约2000户家庭的现有长期面板数据集的基础上。在拟议的研究中，现有的数据库将得到经济实地试验的补充，以得出风险和时间偏好，并收集关于家庭社交网络的信息。有了扩展的长期小组数据库，我们对风险和时间偏好、风险管理和多层面贫穷之间的动态相互联系的了解可以大大提高。

Economic theory suggests that risk aversion and time discounting should decline in wealth. As a conclusion, poorer households, especially in developing countries, are considered to be more risk averse and more impatient than wealthier households, which in turn lead the poorer to take management decisions that could perpetuate their lives in poverty. However, our understanding of the complex and dynamic interactions between risk and time preferences, risk management and poverty, especially in different dimensions of well-being, is still quite limited, because of data limitations and highly compartmentalized research methods. This research proposal applies a holistic approach, where the dynamic interrelations between risk and time preferences, risk management and the multiple dimensions of poverty will be disentangled in order to derive longer-term prospects for sustainable development of rural households in transition economies. The emerging market economy of Thailand, which has seen a considerable decline in poverty but remains strongly vulnerable to adverse risks, is a suitable stage to effectively investigate the dynamic interactions between preferences, risk management and poverty. The proposed research investigates these interactions by differentiating between two levels of risk management strategies, i.e. (i) risk management at the individual level such as diversifying income sources, and (ii) risk management at the group level such as sharing risks with other households in social networks. Drivers and impacts of risk management strategies at both levels are the objects of investigation. The investigation of drivers of risk management decisions will go beyond standard economic theory and incorporate alternative theories such as prospect theory and quasi-hyperbolic discounting. Among the impacts of risk management strategies, both monetary indicators and non-monetary indicators of well-being will be taken into account. The empirical foundations for the research are built upon the existing long-term panel data set of approximately 2000 households from rural Thailand over 5 waves from 2007 to 2013 collected within the scope of the DFG-FOR 756 project. In the proposed research the existing data base will be complemented by economic field experiments to elicit risk and time preferences and by collecting information on households social networks. With the extended long-term panel database our understanding of the dynamic interlinkages between risk and time preferences, risk management and multidimensional poverty can be significantly improved.