Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/35728 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3985
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
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.
Subjects: 
Gender
risk aversion
ambiguity aversion
JEL: 
J24
D03
D80
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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