Skill, effort, luck: Determinants of rank-based endowments and risk-taking in a social setting

Social comparisons and rank-based endowments impact risk-taking decisions. We provide experimental evidence indicating that rank-based endowments have differential impacts on risk-taking decisions based on the aspect used to rank individuals. We observe the largest rank-based differences when such endowments are determined based on individuals’ effort or skill. Compared to individuals who rank first, individuals who rank last in these settings increase their risk-taking by, on average, 17.55 percentage points (pp). In the case of luck-based endowments, the effect size is significantly smaller (11.34 pp). We conduct an additional treatment where rank and endowment are independent and find that differences in risk-taking are driven mainly by participants’ endowments rather than by the ranking itself.