Risk externalities and gender: Experimental evidence

Carina Cavalcanti, Christopher Fleming and Andreas Leibbrandt

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, vol. 196, issue C, 51-64

Abstract: Individual risk-taking often affects bystanders. We use a novel experimental approach to systematically investigate risk-taking that maximises individual but not social returns and the role of gender therein. In our experiments, individuals choose between investments in technologies that not only differ according to their level of risk and potential returns, but also by the extent to which they impose negative externalities on others. We find that both genders are less willing to take risks when they impose negative externalities. Women do not generate lower social returns on their investments than men when they act as individual investors. However, when acting in groups, we observe that women generate lower social returns than men, regardless of the gender of the other group member. These findings provide a novel view on risk-taking by men and women in the presence of risk externalities.

Keywords: Risk aversion; Externality; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 D81 H23 J17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268121004364
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:jeborg:v:196:y:2022:i:c:p:51-64

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.10.003

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).