caa a22 4500 605475555 CHVBK 20210128100352.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20151001xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s00199-015-0876-9 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s00199-015-0876-9 Fearing the worst: the importance of uncertainty for inequality [Elektronische Daten] [Keith Blackburn, David Chivers] We present an overlapping generations model in which aspirational agents face uncertainty about the returns to human capital investment. This uncertainty implies the prospect that aspirations will not be fulfilled, the probability of which is greater the lower is the human capital endowment of an agent. We show that agents with sufficiently low human capital endowments may experience such a strong influence of loss aversion that they abstain from human capital investment. We further show how this behaviour may be transmitted through successive generations to cause initial inequalities to persist. These results do not rely on any credit market imperfections, though they may appear as if they do. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2015 Inequality nationallicence Uncertainty nationallicence Aspirations nationallicence Loss aversion nationallicence Blackburn Keith Department of Economics, Centre for Growth and Business Cycles Research, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK aut Chivers David Exeter College, University of Oxford, OX1 3DP, Oxford, UK aut Economic Theory Springer Berlin Heidelberg 60/2(2015-10-01), 345-370 0938-2259 60:2<345 2015 60 199 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-015-0876-9 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-015-0876-9 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Blackburn Keith Department of Economics, Centre for Growth and Business Cycles Research, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Chivers David Exeter College, University of Oxford, OX1 3DP, Oxford, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Economic Theory Springer Berlin Heidelberg 60/2(2015-10-01), 345-370 0938-2259 60:2<345 2015 60 199