IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/feb/natura/00510.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gender differences in revealed risk taking: evidence from mutual fund investors

Author

Listed:
  • Peggy Dwyer
  • James Gilkeson
  • John List

Abstract

Using data from a national survey of nearly 2000 mutual fund investors, we investigate whether investor gender is related to risk taking as revealed in mutual fund investment decisions. Consonant with the received literature, we find that women exhibit less risk-taking than men in their most recent, largest, and riskiest mutual fund investment decisions. More importantly, we find that the impact of gender on risk taking is significantly weakened when investor knowledge of financial markets and investments is controlled in the regression equation. This result suggests that the greater level of risk aversion among women that is frequently documented in the literature can be substantially, but not completely, explained by knowledge disparities.

Suggested Citation

  • Peggy Dwyer & James Gilkeson & John List, 2002. "Gender differences in revealed risk taking: evidence from mutual fund investors," Natural Field Experiments 00510, The Field Experiments Website.
    • Handle: RePEc:feb:natura:00510
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://s3.amazonaws.com/fieldexperiments-papers2/papers/00510.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Judith Chevalier & Glenn Ellison, 1999. "Are Some Mutual Fund Managers Better Than Others? Cross‐Sectional Patterns in Behavior and Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(3), pages 875-899, June.
    2. Jianakoplos, Nancy Ammon & Bernasek, Alexandra, 1998. "Are Women More Risk Averse?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(4), pages 620-630, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Tauni, Muhammad Zubair & Yousaf, Salman & Ahsan, Tanveer, 2020. "Investor-advisor Big Five personality similarity and stock trading performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 49-63.
    2. Gehde-Trapp, Monika & Klingler, Linda, 2022. "The effect of sentiment on institutional investors: A gender analysis," CFR Working Papers 22-08, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    3. Nikos Vafeas, 2009. "Is Accounting Education Valued by the Stock Market? Evidence from Corporate Controller Appointments," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(4), pages 1143-1174, December.
    4. Seow Eng Ong & Davin Wang & Calvin Chua, 2023. "Disruptive Innovation and Real Estate Agency: The Disruptee Strikes Back," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 67(2), pages 287-317, August.
    5. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2785-2815, December.
    6. Daniel Fernandes & John G. Lynch & Richard G. Netemeyer, 2014. "Financial Literacy, Financial Education, and Downstream Financial Behaviors," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(8), pages 1861-1883, August.
    7. Diane Del Guercio & Jonathan Reuter, 2014. "Mutual Fund Performance and the Incentive to Generate Alpha," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(4), pages 1673-1704, August.
    8. Wolfgang Nagl, 2012. "Wage Compensations Due to Risk Aversion and Skewness Affection – German Evidence," ifo Working Paper Series 145, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    9. Salem, Razan, 2019. "Examining the investment behavior of Arab women in the stock market," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 151-160.
    10. de Andrés, Pablo & Gimeno, Ricardo & Mateos de Cabo, Ruth, 2021. "The gender gap in bank credit access," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    11. Hong, Claire Yurong & Lu, Xiaomeng & Pan, Jun, 2021. "FinTech adoption and household risk-taking," BOFIT Discussion Papers 14/2021, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    12. Schweri, Juerg & Hartog, Joop & Wolter, Stefan C., 2011. "Do students expect compensation for wage risk?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 215-227, April.
    13. Foliano, Francesca & Tonei, Valentina & Sevilla, Almudena, 2024. "Social restrictions, leisure and well-being," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    14. van Rooij, Maarten C.J. & Kool, Clemens J.M. & Prast, Henriette M., 2007. "Risk-return preferences in the pension domain: Are people able to choose?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3-4), pages 701-722, April.
    15. Nataliya Barasinska & Dorothea Schäfer, 2010. "Are Women More Credit-Constrained than Men?: Evidence from a Rising Credit Market," Working Paper / FINESS 6.3, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    16. Dimitris Georgarakos & Roman Inderst, 2011. "Financial Advice and Stock Market Participation," BCL working papers 51, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    17. Oleg Chuprinin & Denis Sosyura, 2016. "Family Descent as a Signal of Managerial Quality: Evidence from Mutual Funds," NBER Working Papers 22517, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Cici, Gjergji & Gehde-Trapp, Monika & Göricke, Marc-André & Kempf, Alexander, 2014. "What they did in their previous life: The investment value of mutual fund managers' experience outside the financial sector," CFR Working Papers 14-11, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    19. Raslan Alzuabi & Sarah Brown & Mark N. Harris & Karl Taylor, 2024. "Modelling the composition of household portfolios: A latent class approach," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(1), pages 243-275, February.
    20. Cristina Fenoy-Castaño & María J. Martínez-Romero & Rubén Martínez-Alonso, 2021. "Does the Female Presence in Corporate Governance Influence the Level of Indebtedness in Agri-Food Family Firms?," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-17, November.

    More about this item

    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:feb:natura:00510. 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: Franco Daniel Albino (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.fieldexperiments.com .

    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.