A Reconsideration of Gender Differences in Risk Attitudes

This paper reconsiders the wide agreement that females are more risk averse than males. We survey the existing experimental literature, finding that significance and magnitude of gender differences are task specific. We gather data from 54 replications of the Holt and Laury risk elicitation method,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inManagement science Vol. 62; no. 11; pp. 3138 - 3160
Main Authors Filippin, Antonio, Crosetto, Paolo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Linthicum INFORMS 01.11.2016
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Subjects
Analysis
Economics and Finance
Elicitation
Estimating techniques
gender
Gender differences
Humanities and Social Sciences
Males
Men
meta-analysis
Methods
Probability
Risk
Risk aversion
Risk factors
Sex differences (Psychology)
survey
United States
gender
meta analysis
risk
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Summary:This paper reconsiders the wide agreement that females are more risk averse than males. We survey the existing experimental literature, finding that significance and magnitude of gender differences are task specific. We gather data from 54 replications of the Holt and Laury risk elicitation method, involving about 7,000 subjects. Gender differences appear in less than 10% of the studies and are significant but negligible in magnitude once all the data are pooled. Results are confirmed by structural estimations, which also support a constant relative risk aversion representation of preferences. Gender differences correlate with the presence of a safe option and fixed probabilities in the elicitation method. This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics .
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:0025-1909
1526-5501
DOI:10.1287/mnsc.2015.2294