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Are women more sensitive to the decision-making context?

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  • Miller, Luis
  • Ubeda, Paloma

Abstract

We conduct an experiment to assess gender differences across different economic contexts. Specifically, we test whether women are more sensitive to the decision-making context in situations that demand the use of different fairness principles. We find that women adopt more often than men conditional fairness principles that require information about the context. Furthermore, while most men adopt only one decision principle, most women switch between multiple decision principles. These results complement and reinforce Croson and Gneezy’s organizing explanation of greater context sensitivity of women.

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  • Miller, Luis & Ubeda, Paloma, 2012. "Are women more sensitive to the decision-making context?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 98-104.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:83:y:2012:i:1:p:98-104
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2011.06.014
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    1. Ubeda, Paloma, 2014. "The consistency of fairness rules: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 88-100.
    2. Dufwenberg, Martin & Muren, Astri, 2006. "Gender composition in teams," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 50-54, September.
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    14. Norman Frohlich & Joe Oppenheimer & Anja Kurki, 2004. "Modeling Other-Regarding Preferences and an Experimental Test," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 119(1_2), pages 91-117, April.
    15. James Konow, 2003. "Which Is the Fairest One of All? A Positive Analysis of Justice Theories," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(4), pages 1188-1239, December.
    16. Alexander W. Cappelen & Astri Drange Hole & Erik Ø Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2007. "The Pluralism of Fairness Ideals: An Experimental Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 818-827, June.
    17. Bolton, Gary E. & Katok, Elena, 1995. "An experimental test for gender differences in beneficent behavior," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 48(3-4), pages 287-292, June.
    18. Alice Becker & Luis Miller, 2009. "Promoting justice by treating people unequally: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(4), pages 437-449, December.
    19. Buchan, Nancy R. & Croson, Rachel T.A. & Solnick, Sara, 2008. "Trust and gender: An examination of behavior and beliefs in the Investment Game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 68(3-4), pages 466-476, December.
    20. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Rachel Croson & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Gender Differences in Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 448-474, June.
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    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Are Women More Sensitive to the Decision-Making Context?
      by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2010-12-09 20:23:45

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    Cited by:

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    2. Smriti Sharma, 2015. "Gender and Distributional Preferences: Experimental Evidence from India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-062, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Bieberstein, Frauke von & Jaussi, Stefanie & Vogel, Claudia, 2020. "Challenge-seeking and the gender wage gap: A lab-in-the-field experiment with cleaning personnel," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 251-277.
    4. Ismael Rodriguez-Lara & Luis Moreno-Garrido, 2012. "Modeling Inequity Aversion in a Dictator Game with Production," Games, MDPI, Open Access Journal, vol. 3(4), pages 1-12, October.
    5. Baruk Agnieszka Izabela & Goliszek Anna, 2018. "Associations with the university as an employer — opinions of women and men representing young potential employees," Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations, Sciendo, vol. 28(2), pages 19-41, June.
    6. Hundsdoerfer, Jochen & Matthaei, Eva Kristina, 2020. "Gender discriminatory taxes, fairness perception, and labor supply," Discussion Papers 2020/6, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    7. Sharma, Smriti, 2015. "Gender and distributional preferences: Experimental evidence from India," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 113-123.
    8. Mara Olekalns & Carol Kulik & Lin Chew, 2014. "Sweet Little Lies: Social Context and the Use of Deception in Negotiation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 120(1), pages 13-26, March.
    9. Ismael Rodriguez-Lara, 2015. "An experimental study of gender differences in distributive justice," Cuadernos de Economía - Spanish Journal of Economics and Finance, Asociación Cuadernos de Economía, vol. 38(106), pages 27-36, Abril.
    10. Sharma, Smriti, 2015. "Gender and distributional preferences: Experimental evidence from India," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 113-123.
    11. Sara Schmid & Rudolf Vetschera & Judit Lienert, 2021. "Testing Fairness Principles for Public Environmental Infrastructure Decisions," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 611-640, June.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Context-sensitivity; Distributive Justice; Gender differences; Laboratory experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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