Ethnicity and risk: a field test of the white-male effect

Shahar Sansani

Applied Economics Letters, 2018, vol. 25, issue 2, 74-77

Abstract: In this article, I analyse the different risk-taking tendencies of students comprising the two major ethnic groups in Israel, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, in a field setting. I determine ethnicity by students’ last names, and I measure risk by students’ propensity to give up a passing grade on a final exam in order to be able to retake the exam in pursuit of a higher grade, but with the risk of earning a lower grade and possibly not passing the course. Differences in preferences for risk may be part of the explanation for differential labour market outcomes between gender and ethnic groups. I find evidence that Ashkenazi men take more exam risk than both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi women, and Mizrahi men. This finding is consistent with the ‘White-Male Effect’, the notion that white males, or males from the dominant socio-economic group, perceive lower risks than females and non-whites.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2017.1296540 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:apeclt:v:25:y:2018:i:2:p:74-77

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2017.1296540

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().