Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/251434 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 271
Version Description: 
Revised version, December 2021
Publisher: 
University of Zurich, Department of Economics, Zurich
Abstract: 
There is substantial evidence that women tend to support different policies and political candidates than men. Many studies also document gender differences in a variety of important preference dimensions, such as risk-taking, competition and pro-sociality. However, the degree to which differential voting by men and women is related to these gaps in more basic preferences requires an improved understanding. We conduct an experiment in which individuals in small laboratory "societies" repeatedly vote for redistribution policies and engage in production. We find that women vote for more egalitarian redistribution and that this difference persists with experience and in environments with varying degrees of risk. This gender voting gap is accounted for partly by both gender gaps in preferences and by expectations regarding economic circumstances. However, including both these controls in a regression analysis indicates that the latter is the primary driving force. We also observe policy differences between male- and female-controlled groups, though these are substantially smaller than the mean individual differences - a natural consequence of the aggregation of individual preferences into collective outcomes.
Subjects: 
Gender differences
risk
altruism
redistributive preferences
experiment
Geschlechtsunterschied
Altruismus
Risikoverhalten
Wahlverhalten
Entscheidungsfindung
Umverteilung
Experiment
JEL: 
C91
C92
J16
H23
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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