Evaluation of Farmer’s Risk Attitudes Using Alternative Utility Functional Forms

Authors
Department of Agricultural Economics, College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Islamic Republic of Iran.
Abstract
The most commonly used utility functional forms are reviewed and their properties
compared. Then, using data collected from West Azarbaijan province, utility functions
are estimated and absolute risk aversion coefficients measured. Exponential and expopower
utility functions classified all farmers as risk averse, but quadratic and cubic utility
functions classified 75% and 65% of farmers as risk-averse, respectively. Findings in this
study indicated that alternative utility functions may classify farmers’ risk attitudes in
different ways.

Keywords