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Financial risk taking, gender and social identity - Evidence from national surveys of household finance

Nataliya Barasinska (nataliya.barasinska@bundesbank.de) and Dorothea Schäfer

No 15, LWS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: Based on household survey data, we compare men's and women's willingness to take investment risk in four European countries, each with a distinct level of gender equality. Our analysis reveals three main results. Firstly, in Italy, the country with the lowest degree of gender equality in our sample, women are less likely to take investment risk as men with the same risk preferences. Social norms seem to explain this result as further investigation of the Italian case confirms. Secondly, in the three countries with a comparatively high degree of gender equality, Austria, The Netherlands and Spain, women self-select into the group of risk-taking investors and are therefore, on average, as risk tolerant as their male counterparts. Thirdly, the risk preferences of both spouses have a significant effect on the couple's risk-taking. Therefore, risk taking within a couple may be gender-independent and be the result of a compromise.

Keywords: Gender; Risk aversion; Financial behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G11 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2013-11
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Citations:

Published in The European Journal of Finance, (2017): 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1351847X.2017.1371622

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