Male coaches increase the risk-taking of female teams—Evidence from the NCAA

René Böheim, Christoph Freudenthaler and Mario Lackner

Labour Economics, 2025, vol. 94, issue C

Abstract: We analyze the effect of the coach’s gender on risk-taking in women’s NCAA basketball teams. Coach’s gender has a sizable and significant effect on the team’s risk-taking, a finding that is robust to an instrumental variable approach. We find that women’s teams with a male head coach are 6 percentage points more likely to take risk than women’s teams with a female head coach. This gap is persistent within games and does not change with intermediate performance. Since risk-taking has a positive effect on winning a game, female head coaches could improve their team’s success by taking more risk.

Keywords: Corporate risk-taking; Gender difference; Success (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:94:y:2025:i:c:s0927537125000193

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102692

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