IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unm/umaror/2009005.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gender differences in risk aversion and ambiguity aversion

Author

Listed:
  • Borghans, L.

    (Macro, International & Labour Economics)

  • Golsteyn, B.H.H.

    (Macro, International & Labour Economics)

  • Heckman, J.

    (Externe publicaties SBE)

  • Meijers, H.H.M.

    (Mt Economic Research Inst on Innov/Techn, Macro, International & Labour Economics)

Abstract

This paper demonstrates gender differences in risk aversion and ambiguity aversion. It also contributes to a growing literature relating economic preference parameters to psychological measures by asking whether variations in preference parameters among persons, and in particular across genders, can be accounted for by differences in personality traits and traits of cognition. Women are more risk-averse than men. Over an initial range, women require no further compensation for the introduction of ambiguity but men do. At greater levels of ambiguity, women have the same marginal distaste for increased ambiguity as men. Psychological variables account for some of the interpersonal variation in risk aversion. They explain none of the differences in ambiguity. (JEL: J24, D03, D80) (c) 2009 by the European Economic Association.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Borghans, L. & Golsteyn, B.H.H. & Heckman, J. & Meijers, H.H.M., 2009. "Gender differences in risk aversion and ambiguity aversion," ROA Research Memorandum 005, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    • Handle: RePEc:unm:umaror:2009005
    DOI: 10.26481/umaror.2009005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ws/files/654325/guid-11324635-25b8-4a29-b548-bcb4ee09d290-ASSET1.0.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.26481/umaror.2009005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J Sargent, 2014. "Beliefs, Doubts and Learning: Valuing Macroeconomic Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: UNCERTAINTY WITHIN ECONOMIC MODELS, chapter 10, pages 331-377, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    3. Lex Borghans & Angela Lee Duckworth & James J. Heckman & Bas ter Weel, 2008. "The Economics and Psychology of Personality Traits," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(4).
    4. David K. Backus & Bryan R. Routledge & Stanley E. Zin, 2005. "Exotic Preferences for Macroeconomists," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2004, Volume 19, pages 319-414, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Powell, Melanie & Ansic, David, 1997. "Gender differences in risk behaviour in financial decision-making: An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 605-628, November.
    6. Joop Hartog & Ada Ferrer‐i‐Carbonell & Nicole Jonker, 2002. "Linking Measured Risk Aversion to Individual Characteristics," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 3-26.
    7. Yoram Halevy, 2007. "Ellsberg Revisited: An Experimental Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(2), pages 503-536, March.
    8. Lars Peter Hansen, 2007. "Beliefs, Doubts and Learning: Valuing Economic Risk," NBER Working Papers 12948, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Daniel Ellsberg, 1961. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 75(4), pages 643-669.
    10. Renate Schubert, 1999. "Financial Decision-Making: Are Women Really More Risk-Averse?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(2), pages 381-385, May.
    11. Daniel J. Benjamin & Sebastian A. Brown & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2013. "Who Is ‘Behavioral’? Cognitive Ability And Anomalous Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(6), pages 1231-1255, December.
    12. Julie R. Agnew & Lisa R. Anderson & Jeffrey R. Gerlach & Lisa R. Szykman, 2008. "Who Chooses Annuities? An Experimental Investigation of the Role of Gender, Framing, and Defaults," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 418-422, May.
    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. Zuzana Brokesova & Cary Deck & Jana Peliova, 2016. "Bringing a Natural Experiment into the Laboratory: the Measurement of Individual Risk Attitudes," Working Papers 16-06, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    2. Becchetti, Leonardo & Degli Antoni, Giacomo & Ottone, Stefania & Solferino, Nazaria, 2013. "Allocation criteria under task performance: The gendered preference for protection," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 96-111.
    3. Oleg Badunenko & Nataliya Barasinska & Dorothea Schäfer, 2009. "Risk Attitudes and Investment Decisions across European Countries: Are Women More Conservative Investors than Men?," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 224, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    4. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    5. Jeffrey Butler & Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli, 2014. "The role of intuition and reasoning in driving aversion to risk and ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(4), pages 455-484, December.
    6. Sasha Prokosheva, 2014. "Comparing Decisions under Compound Risk and Ambiguity: The Importance of Cognitive Skills," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp525, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    7. Soo Hong Chew & Junjian Yi & Junsen Zhang & Songfa Zhong, 2016. "Education and anomalies in decision making: Experimental evidence from Chinese adult twins," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 163-200, December.
    8. Massimo Guidolin & Francesca Rinaldi, 2013. "Ambiguity in asset pricing and portfolio choice: a review of the literature," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 74(2), pages 183-217, February.
    9. Barham, Bradford L. & Chavas, Jean-Paul & Fitz, Dylan & Salas, Vanessa Ríos & Schechter, Laura, 2014. "The roles of risk and ambiguity in technology adoption," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 204-218.
    10. Aggarwal, Divya & Damodaran, Uday, 2020. "Ambiguity attitudes and myopic loss aversion: Experimental evidence using carnival games," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(C).
    11. Muriel Niederle, 2014. "Gender," NBER Working Papers 20788, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Prokosheva, Sasha, 2016. "Comparing decisions under compound risk and ambiguity: The importance of cognitive skills," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 94-105.
    13. Marc Oliver Rieger & Mei Wang & Thorsten Hens, 2015. "Risk Preferences Around the World," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(3), pages 637-648, March.
    14. Patrick Schmidt, 2019. "Eliciting ambiguity with mixing bets," Papers 1902.07447, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2022.
    15. Chiaki Hara & Toshiki Honda, 2022. "Implied Ambiguity: Mean-Variance Inefficiency and Pricing Errors," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 4246-4260, June.
    16. Bertrand, Marianne, 2011. "New Perspectives on Gender," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 17, pages 1543-1590, Elsevier.
    17. Rustichini, Aldo & DeYoung, Colin G. & Anderson, Jon E. & Burks, Stephen V., 2016. "Toward the integration of personality theory and decision theory in explaining economic behavior: An experimental investigation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 122-137.
    18. Insoo Cho & Peter F. Orazem, 2021. "How endogenous risk preferences and sample selection affect analysis of firm survival," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 1309-1332, April.
    19. 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.
    20. Sumit Agarwal & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2013. "Cognitive Abilities and Household Financial Decision Making," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-207, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - 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:unm:umaror:2009005. 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: Andrea Willems or Leonne Portz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/romaanl.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.