Inequality and risk-taking behaviour

This paper investigates social influences on attitudes to risk and reanalyses how risk taking varies with relative position and inequality. Individuals with low initial wealth, about to participate in a tournament with richer opponents, may take fair gambles even though they are risk averse in both consumption and tournament rewards. It is shown that this risk taking decreases in the inequality of initial endowments, but in contrast it increases in the inequality of tournament rewards.