Eliciting Risk Attitudes in the Field: Surveys or Experimental Methods? An Empirical Comparison in Rural Niger

We compare several risk preference elicitation methods – including incentivised, non-incentivised, and framed methods as well as a traditional Likert survey question – in a developing country and empirically test how well consequent measures of risk attitudes predict risk taking behaviour. We find that Likert scale and non-incentivised framed survey questions are not sufficient substitutes for costlier incentivised methods in rural Niger. Instead, the incentivised framed question works best while a simplified incentivised lottery question works almost as well. More risk and ambiguity averse farmers are less likely to adopt fertiliser microdosing indicating the importance of insurance and strategies to promote learning.     

The Article 9 Association,Leftist Elites,and the Movement to Save Article 9 of Japan’s Postwar Constitution

Leftist political parties and labor unions that had stood at the forefront of the collective effort to protect Article 9 until the early 1990s have stepped back to some extent as they have shrunk and fragmented. Instead, advocacy groups whose influence is often enhanced by ‘leftist elites’ have now seemed to come more to the fore, thereby raising certain questions: What roles do the leftist elites play in those groups? How are such groups organized? Who exactly are the leftist elites? This article intends to address questions regarding the leftist elites, as well as the organization and development of these advocacy groups, in particular the Article 9 Association.