The Importance of Being Marginal: Gender Differences in Generosity

Stefano DellaVigna, John List, Ulrike Malmendier and Gautam Rao

Working Paper from Harvard University OpenScholar

Abstract: Do men and women have different social preferences? Previous findings are contradictory. We provide a potential explanation using evidence from a field experiment. In a door-to-door solicitation, men and women are equally generous, but women become less generous when it becomes easy to avoid the solicitor. Our structural estimates of the social preference parameters suggest an explanation: women are more likely to be on the margin of giving, partly because of a less dispersed distribution of altruism. We find similar results for the willingness to complete an unpaid survey: women are more likely to be on the margin of participation.

New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (51)

Downloads: (external link)
http://scholar.harvard.edu/rao/node/183741

Related works:
Journal Article: The Importance of Being Marginal: Gender Differences in Generosity (2013)
Working Paper: The Importance of Being Marginal: Gender Differences in Generosity (2013)
Working Paper: The Importance of Being Marginal: Gender Differences in Generosity (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qsh:wpaper:183741

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper from Harvard University OpenScholar Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Richard Brandon ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).