I do not play lotteries

Abstract

We study individual decision making in a lot tery-choice task performed by three subject populations: gamblers under psychol ogical treatment (“addicts”), gamblers’ relatives (“victims”), and normal (as far as gambling is considered) individuals. We find that addicts are willing to take less risk than normal individuals, but the large majority of victims reports themselves unwilling to take any risk at all. Furthermore, both addicts and victims maintain their choices invariant across different scenarios concerning the risk-return tradeoff.