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on Gender |
| By: | Baiba Renerte; Jan Hausfeld; Torsten Twardawski |
| Abstract: | How to compose boards of directors for optimal investment decision making? Depending on the group composition, each member’s characteristics — like gender and motivated beliefs — can influence the final group decision, especially if the particular investment situation leaves room for decision biases. We design two types of investment situations in a laboratory experiment — one with fixed chances of success and one with performancedependent chances of success. Our design entails the board members’ perceived ability to “beat the odds” of the market and thus models real-life investment situations more accurately than standard lottery choices. We find support for mixed group composition in terms of both gender and overconfidence: Groups with more men and more overconfident group members overinvest when a possibility to “beat the odds” is present, while standard situations do not allow for such pronounced effects. We explore several channels for our results, including (i) risk perception, (ii) responsibi lity allocation and (iii) spillover effects from priming and communication. |
| Keywords: | motivated beliefs, overconfidence, gender differences, risky decisions, laboratory experiment, experimental finance |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:twi:respas:0121&r=all |
| By: | Nicolas EBER (LaRGE Research Center, Université de Strasbourg); Abel FRANCOIS (LEM, Université de Lille); Laurent WEILL (LaRGE Research Center, Université de Strasbourg) |
| Abstract: | A large body of literature has shown the existence of a gender gap in competitiveness and a handful of experimental works investigating the impact of age on this gap lead to inconclusive results. We propose an empirical investigation on that, which is based on survey data and complementary to experimentation. Using individual data from very large survey (European Value Study on 48 countries from 1990 to 2008), we examine how age influences the gender gap in attitude toward competition. After confirming the existence of a strongly significant gender gap, we find evidence of a gendered effect of age on attitude toward competition. Attitude toward competition has a U-shaped relation with age for men with a least-negative view around 53 years but becomes more and more positive over age for women. We therefore observe a U-shaped pattern of the gender gap with age with a minimum around 60 years. Finally, we show that the gender gap and its evolution with age are sensitive to both individual and national gender stereotypes, suggesting influences of cultural factors. |
| Keywords: | gender; competitiveness; attitude toward competition; age; gender gap. |
| JEL: | J16 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lar:wpaper:2020-07&r=all |