IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iiessp/0730.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gender and Overconfidence

Author

Listed:
  • Bengtsson, Claes

    (Department of Economics, Stockholm University)

  • Persson, Mats

    (Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University)

  • Willenhag, Peter

    (Department of Economics, Stockholm University)

Abstract

Do males differ from females in terms of self-confidence? The structure of the Economics I exam at Stockholm University provides an opportunity to shed some light on this question. By answering an extra, optional question, the students can aim for a higher mark. We find a clear gender difference in that male students are more inclined than female students to take this opportunity. This difference in selfassessment is more pronounced among younger than among older students.

Suggested Citation

  • Bengtsson, Claes & Persson, Mats & Willenhag, Peter, 2004. "Gender and Overconfidence," Seminar Papers 730, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iiessp:0730
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:343988/FULLTEXT01
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bengtsson, Claes & Persson, Mats & Willenhag, Peter, 2005. "Gender and overconfidence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 199-203, February.
    2. McNabb, Robert & Pal, Sarmistha & Sloane, Peter, 2002. "Gender Differences in Educational Attainment: The Case of University Students in England and Wales," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 69(275), pages 481-503, August.
    3. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2001. "Boys will be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 261-292.
    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. Cao, Qian & Li, Jianbiao & Niu, Xiaofei, 2019. "The role of overconfidence in overweighting private information: Does gender matter?," EconStor Preprints 203448, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    2. Ray Saadaoui Mallek & Mohamed Albaity, 2019. "Individual differences and cognitive reflection across gender and nationality the case of the United Arab Emirates," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 1567965-156, January.
    3. Dato, Simon & Nieken, Petra, 2014. "Gender differences in competition and sabotage," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 64-80.
    4. Daniela Beckmann & Lukas Menkhoff, 2008. "Will Women Be Women? Analyzing the Gender Difference among Financial Experts," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(3), pages 364-384, August.
    5. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/1ta425q4ev9o6a76uep4hjlunc is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Kataria, Mitesh, 2017. "How long do you think it will take? Field Evidence on Gender Differences in Time Optimism," Working Papers in Economics 694, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    7. Mandel Philipp & Süssmuth Bernd, 2012. "Determinants of Digital Piracy: A Re-examination of Results," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 232(4), pages 394-413, August.
    8. Beckmann, Daniela & Menkhoff, Lukas & Suto, Megumi, 2008. "Does culture influence asset managers' views and behavior?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(3-4), pages 624-643, September.
    9. Luís Santos-Pinto, 2012. "Labor Market Signaling and Self-Confidence: Wage Compression and the Gender Pay Gap," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(4), pages 873-914.
    10. Hoyer, Britta & van Huizen, Thomas & Keijzer, Linda & Rezaei, Sarah & Rosenkranz, Stephanie & Westbrock, Bastian, 2020. "Gender, competitiveness, and task difficulty: Evidence from the field," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    11. Baiba Renerte & Jan Hausfeld & Torsten Twardawski, 2020. "Gender, overconfidence, and optimal group composition for investment decisions," TWI Research Paper Series 121, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
    12. Luis Santos-Pinto, 2011. "Labor Market Signaling and Self-Confidence: Wage Compression and the Gender Pay Gap N.B.: This paper replaces Nr 10.07 "Labor Market Signaling with Overconfident Workers" (June 2010)," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 11.07, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    13. Anne Boring & Jennifer Brown, 2021. "Gender and Choices in Higher Education," Working Papers hal-03383112, HAL.
    14. De Paola, Maria & Gioia, Francesca & Scoppa, Vincenzo, 2014. "Overconfidence, omens and gender heterogeneity: Results from a field experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 237-252.
    15. Elizabeth Ooi, 2020. "Give mind to the gap: Measuring gender differences in financial knowledge," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(3), pages 931-950, September.
    16. Michele Bernasconi & Enrico Longo & Valeria Maggian, 2023. "When merit breeds luck (or not): an experimental study on distributive justice," Working Papers 2023:02, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    17. Marcia L. Zindel & Emilio Menezes & Raul Matsushita & Sergio Da Silva, 2010. "Biological characteristics modulating investor overconfidence," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 30(2), pages 1496-1508.
    18. Carlos Cueva Herrero & Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe Kortajarene & Giovanni Ponti & Josefa Tomás Lucas, 2017. "Boys will (still) be boys: Gender differences in trading activity are not due to differences in confidence," Working Papers. Serie AD 2017-06, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    19. Koellinger, Ph.D. & Treffers, T., 2012. "Joy leads to Overconfidence, and a Simple Remedy," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2012-001-STR, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    20. Jost, Peter J. & Pünder, Johanna & Schulze-Lohoff, Isabell, 2020. "Fake news - Does perception matter more than the truth?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    21. Ricardo Lopes Cardoso & Rodrigo Oliveira Leite & André Carlos Busanelli de Aquino, 2016. "A Graph is Worth a Thousand Words: How Overconfidence and Graphical Disclosure of Numerical Information Influence Financial Analysts Accuracy on Decision Making," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(8), pages 1-14, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Overconfidence; gender differences; exam behavior; exam results;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A20 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - General
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhs:iiessp:0730. 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: Hanna Christiansson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iiesuse.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.