Risk Aversion and Catastrophic Risks: the Pill Experiment

This article focuses on the work of O. Chanel and G. Chichilnisky (2013) on the flaws of expected utility theory while assessing the value of life. Expected utility is a fundamental tool in decision theory. However, it does not fit with the experimental results when it comes to catastrophic outcomes ---see, for example, Chichilnisky (2009) for more details. In the experiments conducted by Olivier Chanel in 1998 and 2009, several subjects are ask to imagine they are presented 1 billion identical pills. They are paid $220,000 to take and swallow one, knowing that one out of 1 billion is deadly. The objective of this article is to show that risk aversion phenomenon cannot explain the experimental results found. This is an additional reason why a new kind of utility function is necessary: the axioms proposed by Graciela Chichilnisky will be briefly presented, and it will be shown that it better fits with experiments than any risk aversion utility function.