Are peasants risk-averse decision makers?

Current Anthropology

Volumn 43, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 172-181

  Henrich, Joseph ^a   Mcelreath, Richard ^b  

^a WISSENSCHAFTSKOLLEG ZU BERLIN   (Germany)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0141654602     PISSN: 00113204     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/338291     Document Type: Review

References (43)

1. BINSWANGER, HANS P. 1980. Attitudes toward risk: Experimental measurement in rural India. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 62:395-407.
2. BINSWANGER, HANS P., AND D. A. SILLERS. 1983. Risk aversion and credit constraints in farmers' decision-making: A reinterpretation. Journal of Development Studies 20:5-21.
3. BOYD, ROBERT, AND PETER J. RICHERSON. 1985. Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
4. CAMERER, COLIN, AND MARTIN WEBER. 1992. Recent developments in modeling preferences: Uncertainty and ambiguity. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 5:325-70.
5. CANCIAN, FRANK. 1989. "Economic behavior in peasant communities." in Economic anthropology. Edited by S. Plattner, pp. 127-70. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
6. CASHDAN, ELIZABETH. 1990. "Introduction," in Risk and uncertainty in tribal and peasant societies. Edited by E. Cashdan. Boulder: Westview Press.
7. CHIBNIK, MICHAEL. 1990. "Double-edged risks and uncertainties: Choices about rice loans in the Peruvian Amazon," in Risk and uncertainty in tribal and peasant economies. Edited by E. Cashdan. Boulder: Westview Press.
8. COOMBS, C. H., AND D. G. PRUITT. 1960. Components of risk in decision making: Probability and variance preferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology 60:265-77.
9. EDWARDS, W. 1953. Probability preferences in gambling. American Journal of Psychology 66:349-64.
10. ELLIS, FRANK. 1988. Peasant economics: Farm households and agrarian development. New York: Cambridge University Press.
11. FOSTER, GEORGE M. 1988. Tzintzuntzan. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press.
12. GLADWIN, CHRISTINA. 1979. Cognitive strategies and adoption decisions: A case study of nonadoption of agronomic recommendations. Economic Development and Culture Change 28:155-73.
13. GRISLEY, WILLIAM. 1980. Effect of risk and risk aversion on farm decision-making. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
14. HENRICH, JOSEPH, n.d. "Decision-making, cultural transmission, and adaptation in economic anthropology," in Economic anthropology: Theory at the turn of the century. Edited by J. Ensminger. Aha Mira Press.
15. HENRICH, JOSEPH, WULF ALBERS, ROBERT BOYD, KEVIN MC CABE, GERD GIGERENZER, H. P. YOUNG, AND AXEL OCKENFELS. 2001. "Is culture important in bounded rationality?" in Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox. Edited by G. Gigerenzer and R. Selten. Cambridge: MIT Press.
16. HENRICH, JOSEPH, AND FRANCISCO GIL-WHITE. 2001. The evolution of prestige: Freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission. Evolution and Human Behavior 22:165-96.
17. HERTWIG, RALPH, AND ANDREAS ORTMANN. 2001. Experimental practices in economics: A challenge for psychologists? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24:383-451.
18. HOFFMAN, PHILIP T. 1996. Growth in a traditional society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
19. HOLT, CHARLES, AND SUSAN K. LAURY. 2000. "Risk aversion and incentive effects." http://www.people.Virginia.EDU/cah2k/highpay.pdf.
20. JOHNSON, ALLEN. 1971. Sharecroppers of the Sertão: Economics and dependence on a Brazilian plantation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
21. KNIGHT, FRANK. 1921. Risk, uncertainty, and profit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
22. KUZNAR, LAWRENCE A. 2001. Risk sensitivity and value among Andean pastoralists: Measures, models, and empirical tests. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 42:432-40.
23. LIPTON, MICHAEL. 1968. The theory of the optimizing peasant. Journal of Development Studies 4:327-51.
24. NETTING, ROBERT M. 1993- Smallholders, householders: Farm families and the ecology of intensive, sustainable agriculture. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
25. NICHOLSON, WALTER. 1995- Microeconomic theory. Fort Worth: Dryden Press.
26. NORMAN, D. W. 1974. Rationalizing mixed cropping under indigenous conditions: The example of Northern Nigeria. Journal of Development Studies 11:37-51.
27. ORTIZ, SUTTI. 1979. "The effect of risk aversion strategies on subsistence and cash crop decisions," in Risk, uncertainty, and agricultural development. Edited by J. Roumasset, J. Boussard, and I. Singh, pp. 231-46. New York: Agricultural Development Council.
28. REAL, LESLIE, AND THOMAS CARACO. 1986. Risk and foraging in stochastic environments. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 17:371-90.
29. RODE, CATRIN, LEDA COSMIDES, WOLFGANG HELL, AND JOHN TOOBY. 1999- When and why people avoid unknown probabilities in decisions under uncertainty: Testing some predictions from optimal foraging theory. Cognition 72: 269-304.
30. ROUMASSET, JAMES A. 1976. Rice and risk: Decision making among low-income farmers. New York: North-Holland.
31. SCHLUTER, M. G. G., AND T. D. MOUNT. 1976. Some management objectives of the peasant farmer: An analysis of risk aversion in the choice of cropping patterns, Surat District, India. Journal of Development Studies 12:246-61.
32. SCHULTZ, THEODORE W. 1964. Transforming traditional agriculture. New Haven: Yale University Press.
33. SCOTT, J. C. 1976. The moral economy of the peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.
34. SHORTER, A. 1992. Chief ship in western Tanzania. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
35. SILLERS, DONALD. 1980. Measuring risk preferences of rice farmers in Nueva Ecija, Philippines: An experimental approach. New Haven: Yale University Press.
36. STEPHENS, DAVID W., AND JOHN R. KREBS. 1986. Foraging theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
37. TURNER, CHRISTINA B. 1996. "Historical perspectives on long-term change: Compadrazgo choice patterns in rural Paraguay," in Economic analysis beyond the local system. Monographs in Economic Anthropology. Edited by R. E. Blanton, P. N. Peregrine, D. Winslow, and T. D. Hall, pp. 171-93. 13. University Press of America.
38. WALKER, THOMAS S. 1980. Decision making by farmers and by the national agricultural research program on the adoption and development of maize varieties in El Salvador. Stanford: Food Research Institute.
39. WHARTON, C. R. 1971. "Risk, uncertainty, and the subsistence farmer: Technological innovation and resistance to change in the context of survival," in Studies in economic anthropology. Edited by G. Dalton. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.
40. WINTERHALDER, BRUCE. 1990. "Open field, common pot: Harvest variability and risk avoidance in agricultural and foraging societies," in Risk and uncertainty in tribal and peasant societies. Edited by E. Cashdan. Boulder: Westview Press.
41. WINTERHALDER, BRUCE D., FLORA LU, AND BRAM TUCKER. 1999. Risk-sensitive adaptive tactics: Models and evidence from subsistence studies in biology and anthropology. Journal of Archaeological Research 7:301-48.
42. WOLGIN, J. M. 1975. Resource allocation and risk: A case study of smallholder agriculture in Kenya. American Journal of Agricultural Economics: 57:1-21.
43. WRIGHT, M. 1971. German missions in Tanganyika. Oxford: Clarendon Press.