IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eie/wpaper/1102.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What drives women out of entrepreneurship? The joint role of testosterone and culture

Author

Listed:
  • Luigi Guiso

    (European University Institute and EIEF)

  • Aldo Rustichini

    (Department of Economics, University of Minnesota)

Abstract

The ratio of second to fourth digit (2D4D) has been shown to correlate negatively with entrepreneurial skills and financial success. We document that in a sample of entrepreneurs women have a lower 2D4D ratio than men, in sharp contrast with the features of the distribution in random samples. Exploiting variation across communities in indices correlated with women emancipation, we show that in regions where women are less emancipated their average DR is lower than that of men compared to regions with higher indices. This finding is consistent with the existence of gender related obstacles into entrepreneurship so that only women with well above average entrepreneurial skills find it attractive to self-select into entrepreneurship. This finding can rationalize three facts: a) fewer women than men are entrepreneurs; b) the proportion of women among entrepreneurs tends to be higher in countries with higher women emancipation; c) women who break the barrier into entrepreneurship seem to show more masculine traits. We also find that once women enter entrepreneurship, they are equally able than man to translate their ability into outcomes for the firm.

Suggested Citation

  • Luigi Guiso & Aldo Rustichini, 2011. "What drives women out of entrepreneurship? The joint role of testosterone and culture," EIEF Working Papers Series 1102, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Jan 2011.
    • Handle: RePEc:eie:wpaper:1102
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.eief.it/files/2012/09/wp-02-what-drives-women-out-of-entrepreneurship_the-joint-role-of-testosterone-and-culture.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kimball, Miles S & Sahm, Claudia R & Shapiro, Matthew D, 2008. "Imputing Risk Tolerance From Survey Responses," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103(483), pages 1028-1038.
    2. Luigi Guiso & Monica Paiella, 2008. "Risk Aversion, Wealth, and Background Risk," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(6), pages 1109-1150, December.
    3. Luigi Guiso & Fabiano Schivardi, 2011. "What Determines Entrepreneurial Clusters?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 61-86, February.
    4. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2005. "Individual Risk Attitudes: New Evidence from a Large, Representative, Experimentally-Validated Survey," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 511, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2007. "Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1067-1101.
    6. Anna Dreber & Emma Essen & Eva Ranehill, 2011. "Outrunning the gender gap—boys and girls compete equally," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(4), pages 567-582, November.
    7. Uri Gneezy & Aldo Rustichini, 2004. "Gender and Competition at a Young Age," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 377-381, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Werner Boente & Monika Jarosch, 2011. "Gender Differences in Competitiveness, Risk Tolerance, and other Personality Traits: Do they contribute to the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship?," Schumpeter Discussion Papers sdp11012, Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library.
    2. Silvia Del Prete & Maria Lucia Stefani, 2015. "Women as ‘gold dust’: gender diversity in top boards and the performance of Italian banks," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1014, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    3. Wolfe, Marcus T. & Patel, Pankaj C., 2017. "Two are better than one: Cortisol as a contingency in the association between epinephrine and self-employment," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 8(C), pages 78-86.
    4. Silvia Del Prete & Giulio Papini & Marco Tonello, 2022. "Gender quotas, board diversity and spillover effects. Evidence from Italian banks," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1395, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    5. Ruiu, Gabriele, 2012. "Is fatalism a cultural belief? An empirical analysis on the origin of fatalistic tendencies," MPRA Paper 41705, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Werner Bönte & Monika Piegeler, 2013. "Gender gap in latent and nascent entrepreneurship: driven by competitiveness," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(4), pages 961-987, December.
    7. Silvia Del Prete & Maria Lucia Stefani, 2013. "Women on Italian bank boards: are they �gold dust�?," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 175, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    8. Mario Daniele Amore & Orsola Garofalo & Alessandro Minichilli, 2014. "Gender Interactions Within the Family Firm," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(5), pages 1083-1097, May.
    9. Werner Bönte & Vivien D. Procher & Diemo Urbig, 2016. "Biology and Selection into Entrepreneurship—The Relevance of Prenatal Testosterone Exposure," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 40(5), pages 1121-1148, September.
    10. Andreas C. Drichoutis & Rodolfo M. Nayga, 2015. "Do risk and time preferences have biological roots?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(1), pages 235-256, July.
    11. Silvia Del Prete & Maria Lucia Stefani, 2021. "Women as “gold dust”: Gender diversity in top boards and the performance of Italian banks," Economic Notes, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, vol. 50(2), July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guiso, Luigi & Rustichini, Aldo, 2018. "What drives women out of management? The joint role of testosterone and culture," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 221-237.
    2. Luc Arrondel & André Masson, 2013. "Measuring savers' preferences how and why?," PSE Working Papers halshs-00834203, HAL.
    3. Booth, Alison & Nolen, Patrick, 2012. "Choosing to compete: How different are girls and boys?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 542-555.
    4. Alison L. Booth & Patrick Nolen, 2012. "Gender differences in risk behaviour: does nurture matter?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(558), pages 56-78, February.
    5. Balafoutas, Loukas & Sutter, Matthias, 2019. "How uncertainty and ambiguity in tournaments affect gender differences in competitive behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 1-13.
    6. Francesca Gino & Erin L. Krupka & Roberto A. Weber, 2013. "License to Cheat: Voluntary Regulation and Ethical Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(10), pages 2187-2203, October.
    7. Balafoutas, Loukas & Sutter, Matthias, 2010. "Gender, Competition and the Efficiency of Policy Intervention," Working Papers in Economics 450, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    8. Cárdenas, Juan-Camilo & Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Ranehill, Eva, 2012. "Gender differences in competitiveness and risk taking: Comparing children in Colombia and Sweden," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 11-23.
    9. Matthias Sutter & Daniela Glätzle-Rützler & Loukas Balafoutas & Simon Czermak, 2016. "Cancelling out early age gender differences in competition: an analysis of policy interventions," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 412-432, June.
    10. Booth, Alison L., 2009. "Gender and competition," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 599-606, December.
    11. Anat Bracha & Chaim Fershtman, 2013. "Competitive Incentives: Working Harder or Working Smarter?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(4), pages 771-781, April.
    12. Matthias Sutter & Daniela Glätzle-Rützler, 2015. "Gender Differences in the Willingness to Compete Emerge Early in Life and Persist," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(10), pages 2339-23354, October.
    13. Jana Cahlíková & Lubomír Cingl & Ian Levely, 2020. "How Stress Affects Performance and Competitiveness Across Gender," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(8), pages 3295-3310, August.
    14. Mario Lackner, 2021. "Gender differences in competitiveness," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 236-236, November.
    15. Muriel Niederle, 2014. "Gender," NBER Working Papers 20788, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Eiji Yamamura & Ryohei Hayashi & Yoshiro Tsutsui & Fumio Ohtake, 2022. "Racers’ attractive looks, popularity, and performance: how do speedboat racers react to fans’ expectations?," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 73(4), pages 597-623, October.
    17. Boschini, Anne & Dreber, Anna & von Essen, Emma & Muren, Astri & Ranehill, Eva, 2019. "Gender, risk preferences and willingness to compete in a random sample of the Swedish population✰," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    18. Cueva, Carlos & Rustichini, Aldo, 2015. "Is financial instability male-driven? Gender and cognitive skills in experimental asset markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 330-344.
    19. Steffen Andersen & Seda Ertac & Uri Gneezy & John A. List & Sandra Maximiano, 2013. "Gender, Competitiveness, and Socialization at a Young Age: Evidence From a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(4), pages 1438-1443, October.
    20. Britta Hoyer & T.M. van Huizen & L.M. Keijzer & T. Rezaei Khavas & S. Rosenkranz & B. Westbrock, 2016. "Do talented women shy away from competition?," Working Papers 16-06, Utrecht School of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • L21 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Business Objectives of the Firm
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eie:wpaper:1102. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Facundo Piguillem (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/einauit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.