"Choices in the 11-20 Game: The Role of Risk Aversion"

King King Li, City University of Hong Kong

Kang Rong, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics

Arad and Rubinstein (2012, AER) proposed the 11-20 money request game as an alternative to the P beauty contest game for measuring the depth of thinking. In this paper, we find that choices in the 11-20 game are confounded with risk aversion; hence, the depth of thinking measured is confounded with risk aversion. We also theoretically show that risk aversion will induce players to avoid choosing low numbers in the game. Further, we show that choices in the P beauty contest game are not correlated with risk aversion.