There is a question that economists have been circling for decades but rarely state plainly: why do some peoples bet big while others hedge everything? The answer matters more than most policy debates, because a society’s appetite for risk determines whether it builds or merely preserves.

Israel, by almost any measure, is one of the most risk loving societies on earth. Among the highest venture capital per capita in the world. The fourth largest national presence on NASDAQ, behind only the United States, Canada, and China. A defence establishment that routinely takes tactical gambles that would paralyse larger, more cautious militaries. The standard explanation is cultural: chutzpah, necessity, the frontier mentality of a small state surrounded by hostile neighbours. All of this is true, but it is also incomplete.

The deeper explanation lies in what the behavioural economists Elke Weber and Christopher Hsee identified in the late 1990s. Studying financial decision making across cultures, they found that Chinese participants were consistently more willing to take risks than Americans. The reason was not recklessness. It was the opposite. In collectivist societies, extended family networks function as a safety net so reliable that the effective cost of failure drops. You can afford to gamble when you know your cousin will not let you sleep on the street. Weber and Hsee........

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